“Well, guess what, Lizzie, so was Charla,” he snaps. “Look, what do you want me to do about this? You are who she picked, which I assume means she thought you would be good…although it seems likely she hadn’t dealt with you recently,” he adds under his breath.
His scolding shuts me up. “What am I supposed to do now?” I ask in a pout, my eyes filling with tears, and the panic attack that had subsided returning in full force. I am partially wondering what the legal procedure to come will be and partially wondering about my life.
“You need to sign these papers ASAP, and then Tiffany will be yours,” he says it as if he has just sold me a new hatchback. Just sign these papers and a 2004 Honda Civic will be yours!
“Okay,” I say, highly aware of the fact that I don’t have a choice. “Send the papers to my office on Monday,” I instruct, giving him the phone number to call to get the mailing address from my assistant.
“Thank you, Ms. Castle,” Buck says, returning to his professional attorney persona. “Again, I am terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks, Buck,” I mumble, not wasting time or energy on being formal or polite—even bordering on cynical, before clicking the phone off and setting it on its base with shaking hands.
3
Another world away, Buck Platner hangs up his old beige phone before slamming his fists and then his head down on his scratched desk. That hadn’t gone anything like he had planned and neither had the night before.
The night before, Buck had been sitting home alone with his golden retriever, Wildcat, when his own phone had rung. His nights were usually pretty quiet (boring) and so the ring had startled both Buck and Wildcat, who had been relaxing on the couch, Buck with a Hungry Man TV dinner and Wildcat with a fresh pig ear.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Son,” his father’s gruff voice boomed through the receiver. “We’re having a bit of an emergency situation down at the office. I need you here.”
Buck quickly agreed and rose from the couch, not bothering to turn off the television or throw away the remains of his microwave meal.
He stood almost six feet five inches in his bare size 13 feet. As if these kind of calls were the norm, which they certainly were not—he had never received one before—Buck slid his feet into a well-worn pair of Adidas sandals and brushed the crumbs off his belly before grabbing his shoddy, faux-leather briefcase and keys and heading out the door.
Besides the tacky attaché case and in spite of the spots of Hungry Man gravy on his belly, Buck looked sexy in his Levi’s and white cotton T-shirt. His skin was tanned from spending time outdoors, his athletic physique was clear under his clothes, and his blond hair was neatly buzzed an inch from his scalp. Climbing into his new black F150, he rubbed his blue eyes and looked at the clock on his cell phone. He had definitely never been called to work at this hour before.
The office was only a few blocks from Buck’s home, and within minutes he was parking next to his father’s Cadillac and climbing out of the truck. Hurrying inside, his stomach tightened with worry about the “emergency” inside.
Once in the office, he found his father, the image of Buck but thirty-five years older, sitting at his desk, rubbing his own blue eyes. Sitting across from his father was a teenage girl dressed in what looked like pajamas, but these days what kids wore to school and to bed looked very similar. Her eyes were red, and clearly she had been crying.
“Buck,” his father said glancing up and looking grateful to see his younger son, “This is Tiffany Dearbourne.”
“Dearburn,” the girl, Tiffany, said miserably.
“Hello,” Buck said stiffly, feeling as uncomfortable as he always did in front of clients of the legal practice.
“You went to school with her mother, Charla,” his father went on to explain. “Sadly, Charla and her husband, Chuck Tatham, were killed in a bad car wreck earlier this afternoon.”
Buck’s mouth fell open slightly in shock. Back in high school, he’d known Charla Dearbourne as the best friend of his senior prom date and the one girl he thought about consistently, even though it had been a dozen years since he’d seen her face.
“Tiffany’s mother was a client of ours, I drew up her will many years ago,” Buck’s father, Larry Senior—called Larry S—continued. “There aren’t any real assets…a house here in town not worth too much, a 1989 Toyota compact. Obviously, the truck is no longer included. She assigned a guardian for her daughter here though, another gal you went to school with, so I thought maybe it would be best if you contacted her about all this. Let’s see, what’s her name?” Larry S asked himself as he shuffled through the manila file folder containing Charla’s papers. “Ah, here it is: Elizabeth Castle.”
Elizabeth Castle? Buck’s heart skipped a beat—that was the girl.
“Um, sure, Dad. I can contact her. Do we have a phone number?” he asked trying to play it cool with the same butterflies in his belly he’d felt before calling her and asking her to be his date to the dance.
His father scribbled the number on a yellow Post-it note and handed it to Buck, who headed for his private office. Once inside, with the door closed, he sat behind the desk preparing what he would say.
His heart was racing with anticipation—in just a few minutes he would be speaking with Lizzie Castle. He had taken Lizzie to his senior prom when she was a junior, but just a few weeks after that he had gone off to Arizona for football preseason practice. Because of the football schedule, he hadn’t gotten back to Victory for Christmas that year and had joined a bunch of guys at Lake Havasu for spring break. When summer finally rolled around, Buck had been eager to return home to see Lizzie but had learned that just days before his homecoming, she had headed to Los Angeles to get a jump on her freshman year at UCLA. She hadn’t returned to her hometown after that, but over the past years Buck had thought about her often.
Lizzie was the only girl who had ever resisted Buck, and that intrigued him beyond belief. As an attractive athlete, Buck had never had to work hard with members of the opposite sex; it seemed that there were plenty of girls who wanted to go out with him—or just have sex with him—simply because he played football. Lizzie Castle was the only girl who had ever seemed immune to this. Buck had always found her lack of interest in him irresistible.
Feeling ashamed that he felt excited to be placing a call of such a depressing nature, he carefully dialed 9 for an outside line, followed by 1-310, and then the phone number his father had scrawled out for him. She picked up quickly, and Buck figured that she must have been on the other line.
Instead of saying what he had planned, the words that came out of his mouth sounded like they always did when he was trying to deal with clients—completely dense. The call was over in a matter of seconds, and only after he heard the dial tone return did Buck realize that not only had he failed to identify himself, he had also failed to impart any of the information he was supposed to.
He thought about dialing her number again but thought again, deciding that he needed the evening to compose himself and would give her the night to collect herself as well before calling again in the morning. Dejectedly, he opened the door that joined his office to his father’s and walked back in where the aging Platner and Charla’s daughter sat uncomfortably. As he entered his father looked up, glad to see him.
“Well, everything settled?” he asked, a little too eagerly. “Is she on her way here now?”
“Not exactly,” Buck said, uncomfortably.
“Are you driving her down to L.A.?” his father asked, his eyes narrowing as he motioned toward Tiffany.
“Not quite. She just needed the evening to collect herself,” Buck offered, aware of how lame it sounded.
He