“He’s great. And I’m great because his divorce was finalized yesterday.”
“Fucking finally,” Raven said, playfully poking her mom’s leg with her foot. “I was starting to worry.”
“We might’ve celebrated a little too hard last night, though. Poor guy is upstairs with a hangover.”
“Happy for you,” Raven said. It made her heart full to see her mom glowing and in love; she deserved it after all the frogs she’d kissed.
“Are you really okay, angel?” her mom asked gently.
“Yeah, I’m fine. A little antsy. Unsettled.”
“Why’s that?”
“I feel like everything is happening in grayscale,” Raven said. “I think I need to go on a retreat or something where I can’t touch my phone or access the internet. Gain clarity and reconnect with my intuition.”
It took losing her apartment for Raven to realize she’d been going through the motions. She valued flexibility and freedom, and she’d sculpted her life in a way that allowed her to embrace that. But that lifestyle was in contention with how she’d been raised.
As an only child of a single parent, she’d learned to save for rainy days, practice frugality, and budget for everything. So once the riotous chapter of her early twenties ended, she felt the need to seek financial security. She took a secretarial position with benefits at her friend’s middle school and worked side jobs to build up her savings and pay off debt.
But what now? She was unclear about what she wanted to do in the next chapter of her life.
“There’s this desert retreat I’ve been looking at,” Raven said. “But you don’t want to know the price.”
“Why don’t you call your astrologist lady instead?” her mom asked.
“Because Ida’s booked till the fall.”
“It’ll be okay,” her mother said. “You’ll land on your feet. You always do.”
Raven knocked the wooden table to stave off bad luck. “Let’s hope.”
“Oh, shit. It’s already nine,” her mom said, standing. “We need to get going soon.”
“We? Where?” Raven asked, reaching for another slice of loaf cake as her mother picked up the plate to store it.
“Remember that meeting with the lawyer.”
Raven had forgotten all about that. Her grandfather (in DNA only) had died earlier that year. His aversion to work and a decades-long love of blackjack made any worthwhile inheritance doubtful. So the Coleman women showed up at the lawyer’s office, wedged between a KFC and laundromat, not expecting much.
A paralegal led them into a room made of dusty surfaces and teetering stacks of paper.
The lawyer, Mr. McGowan, a man in his late sixties with a distractingly wrinkled dress shirt, entered minutes later.
“Natalia Wash?” Mr. McGowan asked after shuffling through files on his desk.
“No, Patricia and Raven Coleman.”
He chanted their names while thumbing through his unorganized pile before pulling out a certain folder. “Here you are.”
“So what did the deadbeat leave us?” her mom asked.
The lawyer, confused, responded, “Deadbeat?”
“I know, I know. He looked the part, but I promise you my father was no family man,” her mom said.
“Ma’am,” the lawyer said, coughing uncomfortably, “I’m the estate executor for Charles Hulme, not your father.”
“Charles?” her mom said, her hands shooting up to cradle her face. “Chuck is gone?”
