Melanie dropped her head. She had heard it all before so many times.
“You’re right, Mama, you’ve been there for me and Amanda.”
“You’re damn right I have. Now is not the time to forget it. We’ve got to make sure we get that money… for Amanda’s sake.” Nina then changed her inflection, having won her point. “Poor, innocent Amanda. No father to take care of her. Just like me and you,” she cooed in almost mocking tones.
Melanie could relate. Gabrielle Hastings, her mother, had been married to four different men. Her big takeaway from those years was that each time her mother divorced, they somehow wound up in a bigger house and with a new car. In the confusing world of a teenage girl, one thing was very clear: feelings were fleeting, unimportant, while material things and status were enduring. Her mother’s comment made her think about her own father.
Jack Clarke had been raised in South Carolina the son of a farmer, land merchant, and general businessman. Jack had graduated from the University of South Carolina with a business management degree and had fallen in love with young Gabrielle Williams, also from a small Southern town. As a Gamecock freshman, so the story went, her mother had made herself popular with the boys early in her college career. Having neither the interest nor the patience for college, she trolled the fraternity houses and found a willing graduating senior in Jack Clarke. Before long, she was pregnant, and she married quickly soon after.
Melanie had been about ten years old when suddenly her father had disappeared. It was a few months later that she learned her parents had separated. She later heard from her mother that Jack Clarke, which is how she referred to him now, had had a male paramour. While Melanie had never seen her father with another man, the rumor had taken flight and was generally accepted as fact in Columbia, South Carolina, where they were living at the time.
She had no relationship with him today, nor did she care to. Adapting well to the lifestyle for which she had been trained, Melanie Garrett had discarded long ago any notion of what a father might be.
Likewise, she had watched her mother rotate through husbands the way some people flip real estate for profit. Melanie mused that it was not a bad gig if you could remove the emotion from the situation; everyone had to be a means to your end.
So, in the final analysis, Melanie viewed men, whether they were fathers or husbands, through a sterile prism devoid of any emotion. In a way, she had inherited the family business and had proven herself a worthy heir.
Coming back to the moment, Melanie sighed. “Maybe I can call Mark Russell, the lawyer that I arranged to help out Kimmie Carpenter,” she said absently.
Her mother stared at her a moment, indicating she was unclear on what Melanie was discussing.
“You know, the case where her ex-husband lost two legs in Iraq, and the Army reclassified his retirement pay as disability pay, which meant she didn’t get her fifty percent.”
“Yeah, I remember, but I thought it was because they were only married a few years.”
Melanie chuckled, back in stride. “Well, that’s the law, but it doesn’t matter. There’s plenty of ways around that. And the nerve of those bastards to try and steal that money from her.”
“Who won the case?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Russell took them to the cleaners. He argued that the Army had world-class medical care — her ex would be able to enjoy that for life — and prosthetic limbs were so high tech today that most people could hardly tell the difference anymore. Kimmie told me that they were trying the old whiplash trick where, instead of wearing the fake neck brace, every day in court her ex would show up in a wheelchair or using crutches. The nerve.”
“Who was the judge? That’s what makes the real difference. If we could get Russell and that judge lined up—”
“It’s a different county, but not impossible. Anyway, Kimmie got to keep her half, and she won attorney’s fees. So she didn’t have to pay a dime.”
“No risk.”
“That’s right.”
Amanda quietly exited through the back stairway that led to the garage. She padded through the darkness down the street to Jake’s truck and opened the passenger door.
“Hey, babe, what gives?” Jake was wearing his blue-and-gold letterman jacket over a set of gray sweats. His hair was tossed in an unintentional way, as if he had come straight to her from running sprints.
Amanda hugged him. “Thanks for coming,” she said pulling away. She slid across the bench seat, her knees touching the stick shift. “It just got too crazy for me in there.”
Jake looked down. “How so? What’s that?”
Amanda looked at the envelope in her hand. “Can we go somewhere?”
Jake didn’t utter another word. He pushed in the clutch, punched the stick shift into first gear, and sped down the road.
Twenty minutes later they were in King’s Mountain Battlefield Park, overlooking the battlefield where Brigadier General Daniel Morgan had finally routed Lord Cornwallis, stopping the British advance and pushing them back into Charleston Harbor.
It was a warm spring night, though cooler at the top of the mountain. Jake let Amanda out of the truck and walked her to the scenic overlook. He kept his arm around her, knowing she just needed him close. This had been his first clue about two years ago. He saw the storm raging in Amanda’s life: two dominant, materialistic women continually putting Amanda between them and whatever problem arose.
“North Carolina’s in that direction,” Jake said, pointing to the north. “And Spartanburg’s back over that way, across the parking lot. See how the night sky is brighter.”
He knew she was listening and that his voice gave her a measure of peace. Sometimes she would encourage him to just talk for hours. She listened and cuddled up to him, finding safety in his presence.
“Keep talking,” she whimpered into his chest. She was crying. “Please keep talking.”
He pushed his face into her hair and whispered to her. “It’s going to be okay. I know what you need. When you’re ready, you just talk to me, okay? But here goes…”
He told her about Morgan’s defense of King’s Mountain and the later battle at Cowpens about 30 miles to the east for nearly an hour before she abruptly began speaking.
“I don’t understand what’s happening, Jake.” She went on to tell him about the major and the chaplain discussing the insurance money. She didn’t understand why her mother and grandmother had acted the way they did. “It’s so unlike them.”
Jake listened and privately seethed. Finally, he said, “Can I see the envelope?”
She handed him a sealed manila-colored page-length envelope. “I’m afraid to open it. I want you to do it.”
Jake stared into Amanda’s eyes. “Are you sure? Do you want your mother to be with you?”
“No. I want you to do it, right now. Just do it before I change my mind!” She emphasized her words with her hands, pushing outward, to provide herself reassurance. Jake could see she was uncertain, but he pressed on.
He pulled a dull Buck knife from a sheath he wore on his belt, popped open the blade and slid it beneath the seal and the top of the envelope. He produced two sheets of white paper with large writing. The ample moon hanging low in the west provided sufficient light for him to read the documents.
Jake looked at Amanda, who was covering her face with her hands, as if she were watching a horror flick. “It’s a lady’s name and address. There’s a date and time.” Jake looked at the date on his watch with the flick of his wrist. “The date’s for tomorrow. Tomorrow at four p.m. Miss Riley Dwyer. Tryon Street, Dilworth Office Complex, Charlotte, North Carolina.”