I snap my eyes to him. “Why are you even here?”
“Uh… because your father and I had an arrangement concerning my baseball cards. Have I not made that clear?”
“Oh, you’ve made it clear. You’ve made it crystal clear,” I say, feeling my pulse rise. “I just don’t understand why my father is leaving a bunch of crap to people I don’t even know.”
Daren mocks an offended look. “You know me.”
“Do I?” I say, mimicking his sarcasm. “No. I know of you, but I don’t know you. So forgive me if I don’t understand what you’re doing at the reading of my father’s will.”
His charming good looks ice over and a muscle works in his jaw. “I spent more time with your father than you ever did. If anyone’s presence here is unmerited it’s yours.”
Our eyes lock in a gaze of mutual contempt. Daren’s attendance at this very personal, and somewhat heartbreaking, will reading makes me want to howl. He knows nothing about my father and me. Nothing.
Mr. Perkins clears his throat and we break our gaze to look back at him.
“James Turner’s last wishes were to leave something to you both. Something he entrusted to me.” He sets the folder down and scratches his head again before scurrying about the messy room. “I know I had it here somewhere…”
I have no idea what the bumbling man is looking for now, but after spending two minutes with him, I’m impressed he managed to leave his house today without forgetting to put on pants.
Daren leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he watches Mr. Perkins fret about the room. I watch as he laces his long fingers and casually taps the pads of his thumbs together.
“Ah, yes. Here it is.” The lawyer holds up a DVD then slips it into a large TV across the room and cues it up. “James put together this will himself just a few months ago. I only opened the initial package last week. Inside, he requested that the two of you be present for this video message.”
He presses Play and my father appears on the screen. His brown hair is grayer than I remember, his green eyes a bit faded, and he’s thinner than ever before, but everything else about his youthful face is the same. He was in his fifties when the cancer took him, but he looked like he was thirty and probably acted like he was twenty. Mom always said that’s what she loved most about him—his childlike silliness. That’s what I liked most about him too.
My heart twists and I drop my eyes to concentrate on a small tear in the couch. That was a long time ago. I look back up.
James Turner is dressed in a tweed jacket and tie, and has his thin-rimmed glasses on. He looks like a college professor from the ’50s. All he’s missing is a pipe and a mustache. And he really did smoke a pipe when he was alive.
He was an eccentric man, always goofing around and doing odd things. But he was good to our family when I was young. My parents divorced when I was six, but before they broke up we used to go on a family picnic every Sunday. My dad would send my mom and I on little scavenger hunts for things like white roses and four-leaf clovers and then we’d lay our blue-and-white-checkered quilt on the grass and eat fried chicken until the sun set.
That was before my mom decided she’d rather be single and swept me off to Chicago. And before my dad decided he didn’t want a family anymore.
I stare down at the couch rip until I hear my father clear his throat. “Hello, Kayla and Daren.” I look up. “If you’re watching this, then I assume I’m dead. Which is unfortunate, because I really liked being alive.”
I already hate this.
“Nevertheless, now that I’m gone I have a letter I want to leave to you—to both of you. The only catch is that you two must agree to wear handcuffs while retrieving it.”
I blink, not sure I heard him correctly.
He smiles. “It’s really the only way to ensure that you stay together and cooperate with each other. You’re both only children with circumstances that have taught you not to rely on others, and being such, I’m sure your first instincts will be to separate and go at it alone. So you’ll understand why I feel the handcuffs are necessary.”
My jaw drops. It actually falls open in shock.
Handcuffs?
Handcuffs? What the hell?
He continues, “I’m sure this sounds preposterous and I have no doubt you both hate this idea but you might someday thank me for it anyway.” He winks at the camera. “Happy hunting.”
And the screen goes black.
Is he—what in the—why would—
WHAT. THE. HELL.
I shift my eyes from the lawyer to the TV and back to the lawyer. I don’t even know where to start.
“That’s it?” I say, stunned. “That five-second message is the entire video from my deceased father?”
Mr. Perkins nervously nods.
I let out a sharp exhale in disbelief. My father has a chance to say his final words to me and he chooses “Wear handcuffs” and “Happy hunting”?
If he weren’t already dead I’d go kill him myself.
Daren puckers his lips and furrows his brow. “I don’t get it.”
Mr. Perkins inhales slowly. “It seems Mr. Turner wants you and Kayla to be handcuffed together while you go find a letter.”
My jaw is still hanging open like a broken nutcracker soldier. What the hell is happening right now?
“Yeah, I got that. But go ‘find’ a letter?” Daren squints. “What does that mean? Is the letter lost?”
I drop my face into my hands, trying to get a grip on the emotion swelling behind my eyes. James Turner couldn’t be a normal father, oh no. He couldn’t just leave me a message saying he loved me or that he was sorry for being a deadbeat dad these last few years, no way. He had to be his usual pompous self and leave me some cryptic video note.
I pull my head up and blink a few times. I will not cry. I will not cry.
Mr. Perkins refers to his papers again before reading out loud, “ ‘If Kayla and Daren work together while handcuffed, they should be able to complete their task in a single day.’ ”
All words fail me. I want to cry and scream and laugh hysterically. I might do all three. Right here on this squeaky black couch. In front of God, and Mr. Perkins, and Daren effing Ackwood.
“It’s going to take a whole day to pick up this letter?” Daren looks just as baffled as I feel. “Where did Turner leave it, in another state?”
The letter. Right. Because that’s the crazy piece in this crackpot puzzle.
“ ‘But if they fail to cooperate with each other,’ ” Mr. Perkins continues, “ ‘their mission may take longer.’ ”
“Mission?” Daren says. “What are we, spies?”
“So let me get this straight.” Shifting in my seat, I press my lips together and try to control the anger bubbling up inside me. “The only thing my father left me, his only child, in his will was a stupid letter? And the only way I can get this stupid letter is by handcuffing—handcuffing—myself to a total stranger?”
“Wha—” Daren turns to me and makes a face. “I’m not a stranger. And I’ll have you know, lots of girls would be happy to be handcuffed to me.” He pulls a crooked smile. “Some actually have been.”
Something in his expression wavers, making me question the cockiness in his eyes—not the fact that girls have played sexy handcuff games with him, just the arrogance with which he announced it, and I stare at him incredulously.
“Yeah, well, lots of girls are morons.” I turn back to the lawyer and plead, “Please tell me I’m misunderstanding and that this is all just some horrid nightmare.”
“Nightmare.” Daren lifts an eyebrow. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
“You are not misunderstanding, Ms. Turner.” Mr. Perkins pulls his handkerchief back out and dabs his lip again. “Your father does, in fact, want you to handcuff yourself to Daren while you retrieve the letter he left you.”
I laugh darkly and lean back on the couch with my already broken heart breaking into more pieces than I even knew were left. “Fantastic,” I mutter.
It was sad when my father missed by sixteenth birthday. It was hurtful when he stopped returning my phone calls every year after that. But failing to leave me anything in his will other than a ridiculous hide-and-seek game for what is probably a disappointing handwritten message scrawled out on his monogrammed stationery is just. Plain. Insulting.
And I thought the face spider was bad.