Underfoot. Leanne Banks
tell me I still have some wine in the fridge,” she said to Maddie.
Maddie gave an unintelligible but sympathetic sounding response.
“Carter-Aubrey?” her mother called from the now open doorway. “Carter-Aubrey, are you there?”
Trina groaned. Her mother refused to call her by her preferred middle name. The other two just did not fit her at all. “I’m here, Mother,” she called from the top of the stairs.
“Thank God you’re okay,” said Aubrey Carter-Elizabeth with a perfect hairstyle, dyed perfectly auburn. She wore a perfect size-four suit and sported a perfect manicure. “I looked at the mess in this foyer and was afraid your house had been looted.”
“Just needed to make a quick diaper change,” she said. “What brings you here?”
“Oh, look at her. She’s a mess. Nanna Aubrey will get you shiny clean in no time,” she said, reaching for her granddaughter. She glanced down at the fast-food bag on the floor. “Dear, you really need to eat better food. You’ll never lose your baby weight if you keep eating that stuff.”
“Thanks for the encouragement, Mother,” Trina said with a heavy trace of sarcasm.
“I’m just looking out for your best interest. Someday you may meet the right man who will be a good father for our little Madeline and you want to be ready.”
Meaning Trina clearly wasn’t ready today.
Her mother studied her suit jacket. “What is that?” she asked, scraping her fingernail over the sleeve.
Trina glanced down and shrugged. “Oatmeal? Applesauce? I dunno. I don’t have anything to offer you except baby food and half my sandwich. Are you interested?”
“No, thank you,” her mother said, wrinkling her nose. “I just came over to see Madeline and drop off the application for the Ambrose school for girls. You probably should have signed her up the day she was born. They have a very long waiting list. It’s so competitive to get in, but since you, your grandmother and I graduated from Ambrose, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Trina felt her stomach twist as she led the way into her kitchen. “I haven’t decided if Ambrose is the best place for Maddie. I’m looking into the Montessori school.”
Aubrey gasped. “Not there. Oh, darling, there’s hardly any structure, no uniforms and she’ll never meet the right people.”
Trina bit her tongue and lifted her fingers into a peace sign, the sign she used to tell her mother she was overstepping her bounds. Again.
Aubrey dropped her mouth. “Oh, you can’t think I’m interfering by merely bringing over an application. And speaking to Owen Randall in admissions,” she added.
Trina continued to hold her peace sign.
Audrey sighed. “May I give her a bath?”
“She’ll love it.”
Aubrey beamed at Madeline. “She’s as beautiful a baby as you were. You did well.” She tossed Trina a sideways glance. “Although it would have been nice if you’d at least married her father.”
“Life’s not perfect,” Trina said. “You should know. And remember our agreement about the discussion of that subject.” If Aubrey didn’t bring up the subject of Maddie’s father or Trina’s love-life disaster when she’d been nineteen, then Trina had agreed not to bring up the subject of her father or the fact that he’d died due to an automobile accident when he’d been arguing with her mother.
Her mother sighed because her life wasn’t going as planned, either. Aubrey was determined to hang on to the family home despite the fact that she didn’t have nearly enough money for the upkeep. Her mother had married her father for his nouveau riche money. Her father had married her mother for her name, which provided him, an outsider, a way into Atlanta’s upper class. Unfortunately her father had lost most of the money in court, suing over principle. After years spent in court, he’d lost his fight and died a month later, leaving her mother with bills.
Trina had long encouraged her mother to sell the estate to someone who could afford to refurbish it, but her mother, who had apparently watched Gone with the Wind way too many times, had cast herself in the role of Scarlett, determined to hang on to the family land.
Too much melodrama for Trina. She was happy with her condo, Jacuzzi bathtub, and loved the fact that her community association fees covered all the lawn work.
“You want to feed her, too?” Trina asked gently.
Her mother nodded.
“Fine. I’ll get an apron for you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
AFTER FIRING STEPHANIE and temporarily commandeering his partner’s longtime admin assistant, putting together a skeleton ad and calling in favors to get a cameraman, producer and some actors, Walker dragged himself into his condo.
He heard a ball game blaring from the television and smelled the combined scents of a Dominican cigar and burger and fries.
Everything his uncle Harry wasn’t supposed to be consuming with the exception of alcohol.
Walker felt a headache pound through his skull. He knew why he’d been chosen to provide a place for Uncle Harry after his uncle had spent a couple weeks in a rehab facility following bypass surgery. Uncle Harry trusted Walker. Plus Walker was financially independent and the Gordon family had a sketchy history with finances, banks, taxes and creditors.
He shrugged out of his jacket as he walked through the wooden foyer toward the den. His balding, hard-of-hearing uncle sat in Walker’s favorite chair, holding a cigar in one hand and a beer in the other. A telltale bag advertising a fast-food burger joint lay crumpled on the TV tray beside Harry.
With a sigh, Walker crept behind his uncle and plucked the cigar and beer out of his hands.
“Hey! What are you—” Harry jerked around with an expression of indignation that quickly changed to a cagey grin. “Walker, my boy, I was wondering when you would get here.”
“Obviously should have been sooner,” Walker muttered. “You know you’re not supposed to be smoking and drinking. And why bother with the bypass surgery if you’re going to clog up your veins the second you get out of the hospital?”
“I haven’t had a burger in months,” Harry complained, pressing the remote to lower the TV volume. “I was due.”
“How’d you get this stuff? I can’t believe that home health aide allowed this.”
“Oh, I sent her home early,” Harry said with a dismissive wave. “And you know I’m supposed to take short walks. I chatted with one of the security guards. Real nice guy. I told him I thought I could get him a good deal on a double-wide for his thirty-year-old stepson that refuses to leave his house. He brought me dinner after he got off his shift.”
“Did he bring the beer and cigar?” Walker asked, feeling like a mother and not liking it.
Uncle Harry lifted his mouth in a craggy grin. “I keep a stash handy. Hey, it’s not like they’re Cuban. Cubans are overrated anyway.”
“And the beer?”
“Was under your bed,” Harry said and wagged his head from side to side. “Pretty lame, boy. I would have expected better from you.”
Walker rested his hands on his hips and bit his tongue to keep from laughing. His uncle Harry had shown up for graduations and contributed money at times when he, his mother, sister and brother had been broke.
Of course, nowadays his mother, brother and sister still had times when they provided the giant sucking sound in Walker’s bank account. Or Harry’s. Depending on which one picked up their cell phone first.
“Gimme back my beer and tell me what you did at