“Your mother had a will drawn up by Larry S. Platner. He has your guardian information.”
Normally, Tiffany was a feisty teenager. This weekend wasn’t the first time she had been grounded, and the offenses ranged from her messy room to her “smart” mouth. Normally, she would have put up a fight that included four-letter words and door slamming. Right now, she didn’t have it in her. She just nodded her head and followed the two strangers out of her home. She then climbed into the backseat of their cruiser, where criminals sat, and stared out the window as they backed out of her driveway. As they drove down her street, Edison Way, she saw neighbors coming to their front windows to look out. It was uncommon to see a police car in their neighborhood, but she was sure that more than one of them wasn’t surprised to see her in the back of it. If only they knew…
5
Now, many hours later, Tiffany found herself climbing the front steps of Buck Platner’s house. As Buck held the door open for her, she assumed that his wife must be inside waiting for them because all the lights and the television set were on; instead, a golden bear of a dog greeted them.
“This is Wildcat,” Buck explained, affectionately scratching the dog behind the ears.
Tiffany gave the dog a polite “hello” pat, which he seemed to appreciate wholeheartedly, and then scanned the room she was standing in.
Upon inspection, it couldn’t have been clearer (even to a fifteen-year-old girl) that Buck was single. The living room was a mess. The coffee table was littered with old newspapers, beer cans, and what looked like the remnants of a Hungry Man turkey dinner. The walls were bare, and the mantel was decorated with football keepsakes from Buck’s illustrious past.
Although Tiffany had never actually met Buck Platner, her mother would point him out around town over the years as if he was some sort of a celebrity. She guessed he was a bit of a Victory celebrity—he had been the star of their high school football team. That alone was enough in this town, but on top of it, he had been recruited to play football on a full scholarship at a university in Arizona…maybe the University of Arizona, she couldn’t remember. After that, he had gone to law school. All of these accomplishments: sports, more sports, a college degree, and a graduate degree were enough to get a statue of yourself in the town square. Tiffany also remembered her mother boasting that her aunt Lizzie had gone to Buck’s senior prom with him. She could tell that her mother felt this connected her to the celebrity, even though she had never seen them exchange more than a simple hello if their paths happened to cross directly.
Tiffany couldn’t help but notice with irony that her mother would have been overjoyed by an invitation into Buck Platner’s home, and now here Tiffany was.
“Lemme find something for you to eat,” Buck said, quickly trying to gather as much trash from the cluttered coffee table as possible before ducking into a room off the living room. After a few minutes, he stuck his head back through the door. “Um, is there anything in particular that you like?”
Tiffany tried to muster a smile at his gesture and headed into the kitchen to find something, although she wasn’t feeling particularly hungry. In the end, she settled for a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal. Buck’s kitchen looked like a child’s fantasy. Nothing green, lots of cans, and plenty of sugar. On a normal day, Tiffany could have gone crazy stuffing her face with junk food, but tonight she felt that the knot in her stomach was taking up any room that could have been used for food.
Tiffany and Buck sat on the living room couch—a couch Tiffany noted was extremely ugly but exceptionally comfortable—watching TV in silence for most of the night. Finally, at almost midnight, Buck suggested that he show Tiffany to the guest room.
Buck rose from the couch and led Tiffany down the hallway, where he opened the only door on the right. Inside was a perfectly comfortable guest room/home office combination. On one side of the room was a corner desk with computer gear and stacks of paper. On the other, a double bed with a plain black comforter. Like the living room, the only decorations were items that Buck had held on to from his football career.
“Sorry it’s not much,” Buck offered.
“No, it’s fine,” Tiffany said, realizing she should have been more polite but not having the energy.
“The bathroom is down the hall. There’s only one, so you go ahead and use it first.” Buck motioned to the door at the end of the hall.
Tiffany nodded and headed down the hall, nervous about what she might find. In her experience, men were not the nicest people to share bathrooms with…at least her stepfather, Chuck, was not. At home, the toilet seat was always up, with spots of pee along the rim. There were always globs of toothpaste in the sink, and short, dark, curly hairs along the edge of the tub. With great trepidation, Tiffany pushed open the door and turned the light on. Immediately she let out a sigh of relief. The bathroom appeared to be the one place where Buck was extremely neat. The toilet seat was down, the lid closed, and both the sink and the floor were clean. On one side of the counter was a single blue toothbrush and an electric razor, on the other, a bar of white soap sitting in a plain white soap dish.
It wasn’t until she was actually standing in front of the sink that Tiffany realized she didn’t have any of her own toiletries. She could see them sitting in the disgusting bathroom at home. She rinsed her face off, not even bothering to wait for the water to warm up, then dabbed it off with the black hand towel hanging on the bathroom wall.
As she quietly stepped out of the bathroom, Tiffany found an anxious looking Buck waiting in the hall for her.
“Are you all right?” he asked nervously.
“Yeah. I just realized that I don’t have my toothbrush or anything with me.”
“Oh,” he breathed a sigh of relief. “We can go over to your place tomorrow and get your belongings before we head to L.A.”
“Right, to L.A.,” Tiffany replied oddly before opening the door to the guest room and walking in. She avoided making eye contact with Buck as she shut the door behind her, mumbling “good night” as she did. She didn’t look at him because she didn’t want him to see her cry, but once alone in the guest room, Tiffany lay down on the bed and sobbed silently into the pillow. She only stopped for a second, holding her breath, as Buck tapped on the door and instructed her to wake him if she needed anything during the night.
Tiffany doubted she would be able to sleep at all, but much to her surprise her crying soon quieted into exhaustion, and before she knew it, it was morning. She woke up because she thought she heard the door to her room opening. Her mother, a chronic “morning person,” had a nasty habit of continually looking in on her all morning until she was finally awake. Tiffany opened her eyes expecting to see her mother’s face in the doorway. Instead the door was closed and it wasn’t her room. In an instant, the previous day’s event flooded back into her head and numbed her entire body. She decided to lie in bed as long as she could—no need to get a jump on the misery she knew lay ahead.
Buck’s night had not been as restful. He’d spent most of it thinking about what he would say when he talked to Lizzie. For hours, he had the conversation over and over in his head; and then when he was able to doze off, he dreamed about messing it up and woke up in a cold sweat. His anxiety over the impending conversation was compounded by the fact that soon they would be face-to-face.
At nine o’clock on the dot, Buck decided that it was a reasonable hour and picked up the phone beside his bed. Normally he would place a call like this from his office, but after sneaking a peak at Tiffany, he was relieved to find the teen sleeping peacefully. All his muscles tense with anticipation, he dialed the number from the yellow Post-it note, which was now crumpled beside the phone; busy signal. The letdown made his head spin for a second. Dejected, Buck headed to the kitchen to make coffee, pulling a pair of Arizona sweatpants over the boxers he normally wore around the house. Every fifteen minutes he hit the redial button on the phone and waited, paralyzed, hoping to hear ringing. For almost two hours, he