to assist” me. Then he uses the word “defund” and I come close to losing it altogether until I remember that I’m in a bank and that Brad, no doubt, has a button under his desk he can push and I’ll be eating industrial carpet with a security guard’s knee on the back of my neck if I don’t calm down.
I stumble outside into the parking lot. It takes me a second to remember what my car looks like. Dori is waiting for me in it with all the windows rolled down, texting madly, when I collapse into the passenger seat.
“Cam, what? You do not look good.”
I stare at her.
“Say something. You’re white. Greenish white. You want to lie down in the backseat? Come on, put your head between your legs. God, you’re trembling.”
Dori forces my head down. As I lean over, hyperventilating car rug fibers, I see, under the seat, a yellow Peeps bunny looking back at me. I try to recall what Easter he dates from and calculate that he must be a minimum of ten years old. And still as fresh as the day I tucked him into a nest of shredded green cellophane grass in Aubrey’s basket.
I sit back up.
“You haven’t eaten anything all day. Have a bite of my wrap.”
I take the wrap and gnaw on rubbery tortilla and whatever vegan abomination she had them fill it with. My guess is nonegg tofu egg salad. Or tile grout.
“Is this,” I ask, holding up the wrap, “supposed to balance out smoking, drinking, drugs, and your powdered-sugar-doughnut binges?”
“Oh, good, you’re feeling well enough to bitch me out.” She snatches the wrap out of my hand. “Crisis over.” She eats and waits for the story.
I hold out for roughly thirty seconds. “She got it. They gave it to her.”
Dori’s mouth drops open and I am treated to the sight of half-mulched vegan egg salad. “The bank gave it to her? I thought you had to be present to sign off.”
“Martin, that psychotic, lying asshole, added a codicil to the trust so that Aubrey could get the money without me. Something that, apparently, is possible the second she turns eighteen. The entire first-year tuition is gone.”
Heat waves shimmer off the parking lot pavement, but I am chilled to my bones. “What the hell has my life been about for the past sixteen years? I exiled myself here so she could get a good education, go to college, and have a wonderful, fabulous, exciting, fulfilling life.”
“You don’t know that. Aubrey is a sensible girl. Beside, worse comes to worst, it’s just the first year.”
“You don’t understand. This whole codicil thing means that Martin must have had contact with her.”
“Yes. And?”
“And any contact nullifies the trust agreement. It gives Next the right to defund the entire trust.”
“ ‘Defund.’ Is that even a word?”
“Brad Chaffee used it. He and Joyce broke up.”
“No! Ken and Barbie split up? Is he gay? Please tell me that Brad Chaffee is gay.”
“It’s gone. It’s all gone. I cannotcannotcannot believe this.”
“Maybe Next won’t find out.”
I squint, which gives Dori time to remember that article I showed her about Next hacking into the IRS system.
“What do I do now? What can I do? Please, will someone please tell me what I am supposed to do right now? I have no idea on earth where my daughter is. I no longer know any of her friends. And even if I could track her down, then what do I do? Stand outside a locked door and scream at her? Call the police to drag her home? At which point they ask how old she is and hang up when I say eighteen.”
“Preaching to the choir,” Dori agrees.
I’d been on the extension when, after Dori’s ex had told her that he didn’t know where Twyla was, Dori had called in a missing person report. The officer’s first question was, “How old is the missing person?” When Dori answered eighteen, the woman on the other end delivered a speech that she had obviously given a thousand times about “law enforcement guidelines” requiring that if the missing person is an adult there has to be “concrete, solid” evidence that he or she is in grave physical danger or will harm himself or others before a police report can be taken. The woman had ended the conversation with these words of wisdom: “Adults are free to roam about as they please.”