Abby Gaines - That New York Minute

It didn’t bear thinking about. She needed to be even better prepared than usual, so she could at least look unrehearsed and intuitive. Okay, the logic was skewed … but that was what she had to do.

Starting right now.

An hour later, Rachel loaded her overnight bag into the trunk of a rented Ford Focus, along with a supply of Aunt Betty’s Apple Pies, courtesy of her very appreciative client—how many bottles of Calvin Klein fragrance had Garrett been given, huh?—and joined the weekend crawl out of Manhattan. Once she was through the Holland Tunnel, she stuck to the toll roads, and the traffic thinned right out.

It was only eleven o’clock when she pulled into The Pines Mobile Home Park in Freehold, New Jersey. She followed the loop road, if you could call the vaguely circular stretch of gravel a road, around to her parents’ trailer.

Her mom must have heard the crunch of her tires, because the door of the double-wide opened before Rachel switched off her engine.

“Hi, Mom,” Rachel called as she grabbed her bag from the backseat. She loaded up an armful of pies, then closed the door with her butt.

“Honey, did you tell us you were coming—oh, yum!” Nora Frye’s eyes lit up at the sight of the red-and-white pie cartons.

Rachel kissed her cheek and handed over the booty. “Kind of a last-minute decision—is that okay?” Cell phone reception wasn’t great here, and it was always a hassle to phone the trailer-park office and hope they’d get a message to her parents.

“That’s fine, though I guess we’ll have to cancel our trip to Paris,” her mother said gaily, leading the way inside. As she crossed the threshold, she raised her voice. “Burton, Rachel’s here!”

“Did he work last night?” Rachel asked. Her dad’s burly build meant he easily found a job as a security guard whenever her parents’ other schemes fell through.

“Got to bed at five,” her mom confirmed, “but he can wake up for you.”

Rachel followed her mom to the small kitchen area. While Nora filled the kettle Rachel had given her last Christmas and set it on the stove, Rachel dug in her purse to produce a pack of real coffee. Her mom set the jar of instant she’d been opening back on the shelf, and reached high for the French press, covered with a film of dust.

“So, what’s new?” Her mom squirted detergent into the press and began to wash it.

“I made the partner short list at work.”

Her mom gave a little squawk. “Hon, that’s fantastic!”

“I know. Thanks.” Just thinking about it had Rachel grinning. She pushed aside the “I might get fired” aspect as she found some scissors in a drawer and snipped the top off the coffee pack. When she was certain her mom wasn’t watching, she tucked a folded twenty-dollar bill in the back of the drawer.

By the time they’d carried their cups over to the table by the window, Rachel’s dad had emerged from the bedroom. He hugged Rachel before he pulled out one of the nonmatching chairs and sat. “That coffee for me, Nora?”

Her mom slid the third mug toward him. While she fussed with cream and sugar, Rachel took the opportunity to stuff another twenty down the gap between the seat pad and the back of the built-in banquette she occupied. Anything more than twenty and her parents would get suspicious.

Her dad took a sip of the hot coffee and let out a satisfied sigh. “Home is where the coffee is, right, Nora?”

“That’s right, hon.” Nora blew him a kiss.

Rachel tensed. Comments like that made her want to chime in with something like, “Home is where you put down roots. Where you decide to stick it out, no matter what.”

Rachel blew on her coffee so she wouldn’t meet his eyes and feel compelled to disagree. Pointing out their fundamental differences in philosophy only led to circular arguments that, despite being right, she never won.

“I’m hoping I can pick your brains,” she said, changing the subject. Her family came in very handy when she wanted to run ideas by them or have them try out a new product. It was her mom who’d said, “This is better’n I make, don’t you think, Burton?” the first time she’d tried an Aunt Betty’s apple pie.

Which had inspired the eventual slogan “As good as Mom makes.” Aunt Betty’s had seen a nice upturn in sales as a result of that particular piece of creativity.

In the past, Rachel had offered to pay them to be her own private focus group—it would help them financially, and she’d assured them KBC would pick up the tab—but they wouldn’t hear of it.

“I’m pitching to a group that’s taken over a bunch of private colleges,” she said. “They’ll be rebranding and relaunching them, along with a finance company offering student loans. But we’ll just talk about the academic side today,” she added quickly.

She’d learned not to discuss anything financial with her parents, however gently couched. I don’t think this email is actually from the president of Nigeria’s largest bank, Dad . Or, A hundred percent interest over three months implies a higher investment risk level than you might want to take .

Instead, she tried to hide enough twenty-dollar bills that they could afford a few small treats. Hoping it was enough to stave off the need to pursue instant riches.

“Sure, we can talk about that,” Burton said. “You want to start now?”

“No hurry. I’ll stay over, if that’s okay.”

“Great,” her mom said. “When I’ve finished my coffee I’ll wander out to the road—” where the cell phone signal was stronger “—and call LeeAnne. She’ll want to see you.”

Good thing Rachel had plenty more twenties in her purse. Her younger sister, LeeAnne, was the mother of three-year-old twins. The twins’ father had taken off before they were even born, so LeeAnne depended entirely on her parents for backup. She usually tried to live within a few miles of Nora and Burton. Though as Rachel often pointed out, part-time work that paid a decent wage and allowed her time with the kids was hard enough to find without the added complication of moving so often.

LeeAnne always agreed, but she still packed up and moved each time.

“Seen any good ads lately?” Rachel asked her father.

Her dad rumbled on about a Toyota truck commercial—TV with radio and print backup—that Rachel also considered pretty good. “But my favorite is that Lexus ad with the bridge,” Burton said.

Rachel stiffened. “Really? You like that?” It was one of Garrett’s campaigns, the first one he’d done at KBC. “You don’t think it was bit over-the-top?”

“Over-the-top!” her father scoffed. “It’s sheer genius.”

Rachel grunted. A sound that reminded her of Garrett, as if she needed to think of him.

“It sure would be convenient if you could win a beer company as a client, hon,” her mom joked. “Your dad won a gas grill in a raffle at work, so we thought we’d get some friends over to christen it. A few freebies wouldn’t go amiss.”

Her parents had been here long enough to make friends to invite over. Could they actually be settling down? Rachel treated it with a healthy dose of skepticism, but, still, it was a tantalizing thought.

Rachel’s childhood was a blur of different homes—cheap apartments, trailers, the occasional small house. Sooner or later, the Fryes had left them all, most with a cheery toot of the horn to the neighbors, a few in the dead of night in the hope the landlord wouldn’t chase after them.

It was amazing none of those landlords had tracked them down and taken them to court … but then, her folks were nice people who always meant well. Their creditors always seemed to end up excusing them.

Rachel excused them, too. They were loving parents, and if she’d had to be particularly tenacious to burrow herself into each new school and earn the grades she wanted … well, that was character building. And it wasn’t as if Mom and Dad didn’t work hard or try to get ahead.