A (Fake) Southern Marriage

Chapter 1 

Keith

You want my advice? If you can’t trust someone with money, then you can’t trust them at all. I wish I had known that earlier before I let some asshole with a fake MBA from MIT do my accounting. So stupid of me. 

But then again, it’s not the first achievement in stupidity I’ve had. The Herefords on my ranch must be rolling their eyes right now.

I’m having coffee with my main man, James. He’s telling me how Carolyn, his sister, is currently looking for a job in accounting. I remember her from high school, mostly as the chick who tagged along with us on our various stupid exploits. But I’m desperate and certainly not above considering her.

“Wait, really?” I ask, trying to confirm this stroke of luck.

“Yeah, just came out of UC Berkeley,” he says. “She wants to come back to town with an MBA, and she’s looking to find a job.”

I furrow my brow a little, trying to remember her the way she looked back then. I remember the short girl who always trailed behind James and I when we would hang out in the woods. She would yell back at us when she found something interesting. It was always something like an arrowhead, a cardinal, or some rare plant she read about.

She would flash a big toothy smile whenever she announced her findings, like a scientist who needed a dentist. We would find all sorts of ways to tease her about it. James because she was his little sister, and that’s pretty much just the way it goes. 

I always secretly thought she was kind of cute, but she was also just a kid. And kind of a nerd. So I teased her, too.

“I do not need veneers!” she’d exclaim.

“I mean, you don’t need veneers,” I said, smirking back at her. “But your teeth sure do.”

She’d give me a playful push, and then walk ahead of us. Always either behind us or ahead of us, she’d look up at the trees and point out the crown shyness. Or how the moss growing on a certain side of the rock meant we were facing east or west. She was always on the nerdy side, but we never thought of her as not cool enough to hang with us.

“Can’t imagine what it’s like for her now,” he says, swirling coffee in his cup. “No job, little girl to take care of. I’ve worried about her a lot since her husband died in Afghanistan,” he admits. “I’m ready for her to move back home, something closer. You know?”

I sit with James’ words. I just can’t imagine what Carolyn even looks like now, much less in crisis. And I am looking for an accountant…

“Well, can I have her number?” I ask, taking a sip before finishing the thought. “I can give her a call and see if she’d like to take up some of the work at the ranch.”

“What, ya gonna have her milk a cow?” says James, snickering.

“No, man. I’m sayin’ I need a new accountant,” I say, slapping his arm.

James takes a napkin and a pen out of his bag and starts scribbling her number down. “Here,” he says. “Give ‘er a call.”

The next day, I ring her number. I start pacing around my room as I wait for her to pick up. Just when I’m about to try calling again, a velvet voice emerges from the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey, is this Carolyn?” I ask as I stop my pacing. “This is Keith. From high school?”

 “Oh, wow! Blast from the past!” she exclaims with a gasp.

“Yeah, it’s been a while. Heard you were thinking of coming back?” I say, grinning.

“Oh, yeah! I’m guessing James told you?” she says.

 “I heard you were looking for work as an accountant?” For some reason I nod, thinking she can see me.

“Yeah, I’ve been sending my CV all over the place.”

“Well, send it to me,” I say. “I need an accountant ASAP to help manage my funds at the ranch.”

A moment passes. It’s like I can feel her eyes widen, or her mouth hang open. I can’t help but think about her voice, and how it sounds so different from how I remembered it. When we were in school, her voice was always this squeaky sound we could hear in the distance, but now it’s something more subtle.

“Uh…that sounds great! It’s just that, uh…” She pauses for a moment. “I would need to find a place for Andrea and I to stay…”

“Andrea’s your daughter, right?”

“Yeah, we’ve been out here in San Francisco,” she says. “Rent here is terrible. Hence why I –”

“Why you want to come back here?”

“Exactly.”

My mind immediately jumps to a solution. Well, you both could stay at my place, but something about that gives me pause. Is that a weird offer to make? I feel sorry for her and Andrea, but I don’t want to make her uncomfortable.

“Well, feel free to say no to this, but you both can come stay at the ranch with me,” I offer. “It's a whole damn ranch, we’ve got plenty of room, and you can stay until you find a place of your own.”

Letting the idea sit with her, I can sense her working through whether or not it’s a good idea. Normally, I wouldn’t offer this to someone I didn’t know, but even I can understand that it’s a hard choice to make. It feels like a whole minute passes, and I decide to break the silence.

“How ‘bout this?” I say. “Why don’t you send me your CV, and then you can decide later. It’s not a dealbreaker if you decide to live somewhere else.”

“Oh, yeah!” she quickly responds. “It’s not a big deal, Keith. It’ll be like high school all over again!”

 “Hopefully not. High School Keith had no idea what the hell he was doing,” I say, laughing back at her.

“Couldn’t have been any worse than High School Carolyn,” she says. “I’ll have that sent out to you. And I’ll let you know if I’m cool with Andrea and I staying with you.”

“Sounds good. Looking forward to seeing it!” We hang up and for a moment, I wonder if I did the right thing. Carolyn and I go way back, but am I prepared to have her stay with me? How much has she changed since high school, and have I really changed? Will we be so different that it just won’t be the same as our high school days? What if we end up hating each other? I decide not to give that idea any more weight before going on with my day.

A week goes by. I’ve given a job offer to Carolyn, and she’s accepted. I make sure the guest bedrooms are cleared of all the old boxes so that she and Andrea have their own space. I can’t help but think about how strange this is. Most people leave their friends behind after high school and reinvent themselves. Who is she now?

I hear a knock, and I open the door to see a kid carrying a purple suitcase. She has puffy black hair, in two buns on each side of her head. We stare at each other, and I realize just how awkward I am in front of children.

“Weird, you don’t look anything like Keith Richards,” she says. She’s looking me up and down, trying to assess me.

“Huh?” I say, blinking twice.

“It was a joke,” she says, tilting her head. “How can I be Generation Alpha and know more than you about the Rolling Stones? Wait, you have dogs?” she squeals when she notices Rocco and Lucy’s wet noses edging past my legs to sniff around the door.

Before I can even ask who she is, a woman runs up behind her dragging along two suitcases. “Andrea, I told you to wait before knocking!” she says before looking up at me. “Keith! It’s really you!”

We both grin, taking each other in.  Carolyn looks like…a completely different woman. Her emerald eyes gaze directly into mine, and I can see the flecks of brown on her irises. Her chestnut skin glows, and her long hair droops behind her like a dark red cape. It’s clear that the voice matches the person very well. Is this really the same girl from high school that I grew up with?

I feel a little self-conscious about my own appearance. If I had known she was going to look this good, I would’ve worn a nicer shirt. 

Wait a second…she’s my employee. Boundaries, Keith, boundaries. But now that I think about it, the boundaries are already blurred: my employee is living with me, and she’s running my finances. I need to balance my professionalism as her employer, while also making sure that our friendship stays intact.

For a second, I feel like I have to snap myself out of it before she realizes that I’m staring at her. C’mon, Keith. Let’s not get carried away.