THE SURFACE
Chapter Thirteen
"Lexi! Ashley! Time to go to
riding!" Melinda called from the front door, expecting them to be ready to
go. Maybe they didn’t hear me…
"Lex! Ash!" she called
again. This time, Ashley and Lexi appeared, dressed to go riding in beige
breeches and holding their tack.
"Okay, we heard you! Let’s
go." Ashley tried to make it look like they had been up to no good. She
didn’t want her to know what they were up to, but too bad Lexi had other ideas.
"Hey, Melinda, does the last
name Hockley ring a bell with you?"
Melinda thought about it as she
sat in traffic on Park Avenue. "No. Was that a client of ours?"
"Uh…no, but does the name
Calvert?"
"No shit, Lex. That’s your
last name!" Melinda rolled her eyes, thinking Lexi was losing it.
"Why do you ask?"
"Since Ash’s encounter with
Rose, we’ve been looking up family history…" Lexi’s voice trailed off as
Ashley turned up the volume on her IPod, trying to drown it out, knowing Lexi
was bound to mess something up to make it look good.
"Lex, I know that Cal
changed his last name to Calvert from Hockley, and he did not kill himself as
soon as the stock market crashed. He waited a few days to see what would happen.
Then he killed himself, and no, it is not correct that he drank himself to
death."
Ashley giggled under her breath;
Lexi had twisted the story up after all. "Mel, let me tell you the real
story," Ashley offered. "Now, what really happened after the occurrences
is I went to Lexi and…" Ashley’s voice trailed on until they were almost
out of Secaucus. "And that is what really happened."
There was an eerie silence for a
moment or two. "That sounds more like it," Melinda confirmed. Lexi
rolled her eyes. "Why are you guys so interested in Rose, anyway? You two
never showed any interest in family history until Rose came back
supposedly."
"Well, now we want to know
as much as possible, and her connection to Jack," Ashley started.
"Her connection to
Jack?" Melinda asked suddenly. "All right. What is this all
about?"
"She says she wants Jack,
and she wants us to find him! And then this Ruth DeWitt Bukater comes into the
picture…" Lexi finished.
"She was your
great-great-grandmother. Rose told me about her when she was younger, and how
she cared more about society than her own self!"
"Bitch," Lexi slurred.
"What did you say, Lexington
Alyssa-Rose?" Melinda raised her voice slightly.
"Witch. She was a witch for
caring more about the outside world than her daughter!" Lexi corrected,
even though she knew that Melinda knew what she had really said.
"Ya think? I’m glad you two
are nothing like her. So, she enters this picture how?"
"Well, she paid me a little
surprise visit through visibility and then again through the board. She was
threatening me, telling me that she would give me nightmares for the rest of my
life if Jack and Rose were an item again," Ashley continued.
"Why doesn’t that surprise
me?" Melinda turned into the driveway of the barn. "Just try not to
deal with her, all right?"
Ashley and Lexi got out and put
their tack on the fence of the jumping arena. "What if we never find
Jack?" Lexi asked as they walked to the barn.
"Well, I don’t know. We may
or may not ever find him, and if we don’t…" Ashley paused.
"Then what?" Lexi
wanted an answer. "We will be haunted until our dying day?"
"No. There must be some way.
Let’s just get through lessons and then start searching."
*****
"I cannot believe that Rose
can jump that high!" Lexi exclaimed happily, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, you jumped pretty
high, like four foot four, I think," Ashley recalled as they entered the
quiet apartment.
"Last one to the computer
cleans hooves tomorrow!" Lexi said as she ran off to the computer room.
Ashley shook her head, taking the time to put her tack away instead of throwing
it over the chair.
"You’re grounded, so you’ll
be cleaning hooves tomorrow."
Lexi came back out of the
computer room cautiously with an article in her hand. "This was in the
printer."
Ashley took the article and
multitasked, taking off her paddock boots while reading the article. ''Did you
print this?"
Lexi shook her head. "I
thought maybe you did."
Now it was Ashley’s turn to shake
her head. "Come on. We need more information about this."