“But you also told me that his parents were happy that you’d straightened him out. Now he has a job and retirement account and it was all your doing.”
Levi seemed to remember conversations well, too. Maybe he was writing up his own transcripts. “That’s true, they were glad. But they still didn’t like me very much. They wanted him to meet someone better.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“They wanted a lot for him, maybe because they’d sacrificed a lot to get him where he was,” I explained. “For example, that lacrosse team I mentioned, the one he was on with Lance, was very expensive. They traveled all over the place to play and he always needed new sticks and cleats, and all that added up. He also needed a car, a nice one, and they sent him to private school.”
“What the hell does any of that have to do with you? It was before you met him, if my math works out.”
“Everyone around Grant came from backgrounds of family money and influence, but then he ended up with me,” I continued. “I had basically nothing. I didn’t even give my mother a tombstone for a few years because I couldn’t afford it.”
“So they were hoping that he’d latch onto a woman and mooch? Is that what you mean?”
“Well…yes, I guess,” I said. “At the least, they wanted him to find someone with prospects.”
“What’s wrong with your prospects?”
“Levi, let’s be realistic,” I said sternly. “I don’t have a good job in my field of study and I certainly don’t have an apartment with a terrace. I live with a cat in a place where the window doesn’t even open. They were right about me.”
“You’re not done yet,” he said. “You have plenty of time to make changes.”
Maybe, but I felt so stuck.
“What else did you want to do?” he asked.
“I had some plans,” I said. I’d thought about graduate school, but I had needed to work for a while to make money for that and it was impossible to save as much as I wanted with all our expenses. “I couldn’t afford everything that I wanted and neither could Grant.”
“How much was he helping out?” he asked, and that was a good question. I thought of the ghastly car insurance premiums and shrugged. “I don’t see how any of that is enough reason todrop someone when she’s in the hospital and needs help,” he continued.
“They didn’t like me,” I repeated. “Vivienne said it today but in my heart, I knew it all along. They tolerated me because I was with Grant, but that was all. I bet my app therapist would have had something to say about it if we’d had time to get into the situation.”
“That woman was a weird therapist. My parents made me to talk to someone in high school when I was skipping class and screwing up, and my guy never told me shit like yours did for you.”
“I was wondering if she knew that she was going to leave, so she just threw caution to the wind and started letting her clients in what she really thought, rather than trying to lead us to the right spot. Maybe she just thought, ‘Screw it. I’m going to tell them the truth.’”
Levi still wanted to talk about Grant but we were quickly approaching Vivienne and Lance’s house. It wasn’t a building I’d ever admired aesthetically due to its abundant fanciness, but of course I’d understood that they were lucky to live there. How many other couples came out of college and moved into a six-thousand-square-foot home with a swimming pool?
“I don’t see the white Porsche that Hernán told me about,” he said as we stopped across the street.
“Maybe they bought more cars,” I said, because there were several in the driveway that I didn’t recognize. “Maybe they’re having a party.”
“Midday on a Wednesday? Don’t most people work?”
Lance did, in a job provided by his parents, and Vivienne had done something, too. “Who’s here, then?” I asked, staring. “They like to travel and wear new stuff, but they were never interested in collecting a bunch of vehicles.” The house looked a little overgrown, too, which was different. They also weren’t into doing yardwork themselves but they’d always had crews of people to keep things up for them.
“Who’s that?” he asked, as we watched the garage door open and an older woman came out.
“I don’t know. It’s not Vivienne.”
We could see that the interior of that garage was stacked with large boxes, moving boxes. The woman got into one of the cars in the driveway and reached to push something near the visor, and the garage door closed again. “I think she lives here,” he told me. “If we stay parked like this, they’re going to think we’re up to something.”
“Casing the joint,” I said, nodding.
“Sure,” he said, and grinned. “Let’s take a powder.”
As we drove away, I looked for information on my phone. “Vivienne and Lance sold that place two months ago,” I announced. Since I’d been preventing myself from hunting down information about all of them, it had gone on without my notice.
“So they moved.”
