Finn Part 2

Erica wasn’t sure quite what to say. Alex had a more practical approach. “Finn doesn’t appreciate spectators when she’s like this. Anything I can do to help?” Erica snapped out of it and took her tablet from the table. “Do you think Finn would mind if we use this as an office? I mean, we are in kind of a rush, here.”

“She won’t mind at all.” Alex was sure of that.

They were both on the phone for what seemed like hours. The most urgent things were taken care of. Erica took her leave of Alex, promising she’d be back later, maybe the next day. Finn still had to sign off on a few things. Alex was mostly happy that they’d managed to keep the wind from underneath her in-law's wings. The cancellation was made with dignity and kindness. Everyone was thanked and paid for their services. And cake, flowers, and food were all donated to people who needed it much harder than any of them did. That was the way Finn did things. Since Brent was on a plane to god knows where, she was the one in charge, not her in-laws. That should give her some satisfaction, Alex thought.

He made two cups of tea, took the biscuit tin and made his way upstairs, to his daughter who lay on the bed. There had been tears. Of course, there had been. She was only human.

“Is everything taken care of?” She asked her father, trying to look composed as she sat up. Her makeup was smudged all over her face and bedding. When she saw her father look at it, she got up and checked the mirror. “Oh god, I look like something from a horror film. So?”

Alex brought her up to speed about the arrangements made to take her mind of her feelings.

“Oh, that’s good.” She came back and sat back down, gladly taking the tea he handed her. “

“Brent. Can I ask what happened?” He tried. He knew his daughter very well and knew things often struck inwards with her.

“That bastard.” She started. She related the conversation that had taken place. “She was waiting for him in a cab outside. The fucking nerve.” Anger was good. It felt good to Finn. She had the right to be angry.

“And he had the nerve to say he’d proposed because I wanted it so badly. That I deserved it.” Finn had never given any hints that pointed towards a proposal. When he had, in the middle of the country club ball, it had seemed like a fairy tale.

“Bet his mother tried to talk him out of it.”

“Well, she should be happy. Becky is fully society approved. Probably hand-tested by every man of the club.”

Despite Finn’s predicament Alex had to laugh. That lightened the mood.

“So now what?”

She shrugged. “I can’t decide today. I’m drained. Suggesting loads of comfort food, possibly wine. A good night’s sleep and we’ll see tomorrow. Suppose you have to go home tomorrow anyway.”

Alex sipped his tea before answering. “I could stay away longer. Or you could come with me.”

The thought was tempting. Although Finn didn’t look forward to being cooped up in the parental abode. “Tomorrow.” She promised. He had to agree with her. It was stupid deciding on anything when drained and high on emotion.

“Coming down for a bit? I’ll run up to the grocery store for all that comfort food. We’ll make a picnic out of it.” Alex suggested.

“Erica is gone, she’d be by tomorrow. A few things still need signing.”

“Sure. I’ll get changed. See you in a bit.”

Alex was already out by the time she got to the kitchen. It was a mess. She started to clean up. From the corner of her eye, she saw her wedding dress hang from a hanger from a cupboard. She allowed herself to stare at it. Part of her wanted it destroyed. It had all been a lie. It wasn’t her. She would never have chosen such a fitted and elegant dress. What had gotten into her? She was playful, different, weird. When had she lost herself?

She zipped up the bag around it, to prevent it from getting dirty. She would donate it as well. Plenty of women who would love a dress like that, but couldn’t afford it. It had cost much more than Finn could ever have imagined. Now it was all passed, she was ashamed even to want to spend that kind of money on a dress. How many people could she have helped with that? Brent had always brushed that away. As a society lady, she could help so many, he’d assured her. Yes, by attending posh parties and fundraisers. It had taken her way too long to catch up with that.

Amidst the mess on the table, she found her phone. 37 missed messages. She quickly ran through the list. Brent had tried to call her twice, seeing the time, probably from the airport. He’d not left any messages. Other than that, it was friends. Or friends of his, she should say. They either wanted the inside scoop or pretend to be worried about her.

She didn’t know whereto Brent had rebooked. Frankly, she didn’t care. ‘I assume you’ll have moved out by the time we get back’. Had that been a threat? Or a suggestion? She was of a very good mind to throw out all his things. She wasn’t vindictive, but she’d given him four years of her life. And he was going to kick her out, just like that? The house was in his name, of course. There was no way, with her wages though not bad, that they’d get a mortgage for a 3.5million pound house.

The tub of ice-cream Alex had bought, never even made it to the freezer. In all stress and things that needed doing before, Finn had had nothing more than a bowl of yoghurt in the morning.

“Ha, no more having to fight to maintain my size 6 to 8.” She said as she’d divided the contents of the tub into two bowls. They vegged out in the living room. Alex flawlessly followed his daughter’s lead in not talking about anything substantial. He knew she needed time to process.

While they watched TV and chatted, a considerable amount of ice cream, chocolate, crisps and red wine disappeared. Finn got drowsy with the alcohol and carb overdose. Not to mention her jet lag catching up with her. “I’d go to bed if I were you.” Her father suggested. It was only 8 pm. Finn didn’t argue and did as he said before she’d have to be carried up the stairs.

Alex cleaned up the room and had a cup of coffee in the kitchen. He blamed himself more than anyone. He should have told Finn Brent was bad news. Rich, successful men always thought the world ran according to their rules. For them, it was mostly true. Why did he keep failing her as a father, not being able to protect her from harm, again?

The house was quiet when Finn woke up. For a while, she lay back in bed and let everything run through her mind. She’d have to find a place to stay. Work wouldn’t be that much of a problem, she thought. Maybe she could call the office and see if she could be deployed abroad immediately. Back with Dave, Eddie and Cameron preferably. But she wasn’t picky. There weren’t many women in her field of expertise. And for a moment she even considered a position in training. She’d been offered as much before. She had to start all over again, so it felt. She could do whatever the hell she wanted. If not her entire life’s savings had evaporated with the wedding. They’d agreed to pay for it from her savings account and see to it later. Crap, she only had a few thousand pounds left to her name. No home, no car, Brent had convinced her to sell it because there was only one parking space in front of their house. She’d have to do the maths.

Finn took her phone from the nightstand and found that both of their mutual accounts were blocked. He had made very sure she’d not be able to get to his money. That rat bastard.

Think, she had to think. It was only 4 am, but there’d be no more sleep.

Quietly she made her way up to the attic, where Brent had a home office. He didn’t use it all too often, vastly preferring his posh space in his father’s building in the city. Sometimes he retreated there though. It was also the place he kept their paperwork.

Finn was a woman on a mission. Meticulously she went through the drawers of his desk and file cabinets. She even tried to break into his computer. Nothing of use she could find. Not even her papers and she’d need those to apply for a place to live and perhaps a new job. Then she turned to the safe. She’d hoped to run into the lock combination, she had found the key, but that wasn’t enough. Why had he not written that down somewhere? She was an engineer and was used to writing everything down. It was easy to get numbers confused if you worked with so many.

Then she decided there was only one thing to it. But she’d have to wait until her father was away. She did not want him to witness it, and if she’d try and break into the safe now, she would surely wake him up.

Breakfast was on the table when he got out of bed.

“You look like you’ve had a good night’s sleep.” He said as he kissed his daughter’s temple.

“I did. I’m trying to embrace getting rid of him.”

“You should.”

She smiled.

“What are you up to?” He knew her too well.

“Erica will stop by in a bit. After that, I’m going to have to see to my finances and things. Find a new place to stay.”

“Finn…”

“Yes, dad. I know. I’m not sure I want to stay in London. Maybe I’ll move somewhere a bit closer to home.”

“That would be awesome.”

“You can forget about Dumbarton though. I am not moving there.”

“I understand.”

“And I’m not coming home with you to stay over there until I find something else.”

“Why do you hate that house so badly?”

“It’s old. It’s laced in history. It’s not home.” She could see she’d hurt her father with that. Through the years he had taken much effort to make the place feel like home to her. Brent had of course been in love with the house, and the idea that it would be theirs when Alex passed, only gave it more appeal. It spoke of power, old royalty. Finn’s mother had come from a family of wealth and power. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I kiddo. Do you want me to stay here?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m good. Won’t be here for long myself, I guess. You can go home. I’m sure you have things that need seeing to.”

The estate wasn’t much to be managed much anymore these days. There was a housekeeper, trying to do the best she could. A group of gardeners who’s main purpose was to maintain everything the way it was. The house needed a loving hand to restore and make it come to live again. At times, even to Alex, who had lived there for over 40 years, it felt like a mausoleum. He would love to make it a home for his daughter. He was lost as to how. He had never been very handy, that was not why Gertrude had picked him. They had money and people to do things. That had been then.

Erica came by in the morning. After that Finn drove her father to Euston station. He told her he could take the underground, but she wanted to spare him two transfers. The journey back up North was long enough as it was. Both valued their independence.

When Finn returned home, she took some of her gear from her office, behind the kitchen. When moving in, she was granted some workspace. Most of her work tools were in a storage locker somewhere else. Brent could not handle being faced with it on a daily bases, and some of it was too big and heavy for Finn to haul up and down the stairs all the time.

On the desk in the attic, she unpacked her fine drill set. Her laptop was beside it. It had been ages since she’d cracked a safe, but she was confident that, given enough time, she could. She was not going to ask Brent for the code. He didn’t deserve that much consideration. Finn hummed as she prepared her tools. “Specialized drills for the win.” Sounded through the attic as she worked.

It took her about 30 minutes. A professional safe-crack would have done it in a minute, she was sure. But the satisfaction it gave her when it opened was worth every minute.

She sat down at the desk, pushed her things aside and spread out the papers. There was a wallet with some cash, a few thousand. For someone like Brent small change. Although she didn’t mean to steal, she did need it now her savings were blown on the wedding. The rest was quite useless. Papers for the house, to the car. To Finn’s surprise, she saw the car was registered to her name. Was he so cheap that they had done so because insurance would be cheaper? For whatever reason, she took her win. Brent loved that car. She could sell it and take the money for a down payment on another property. If she were to move back to Scotland, she could come a long way with the budget she had. She could find something cheap at first, work abroad for another year and then find something nice. Her job paid very well in that respect. Warmth spread over her. It took a while for her to recognise it. She’d lost the fire inside of her, during her time with Brent. She’d not noticed it at first. Constantly adapting to him, to try and be the person he wanted her to be. The feeling she had lost herself while she was with him, was now even stronger than it had been the day before. She had been sad, angry. After a good night’s sleep, she started to realise she was better off without him. Was it too soon? To move out on the day after getting dumped? It probably was. But he hadn’t wasted any time. Why should she?

The papers she couldn’t use, she shoved back into the safe. It wouldn’t lock anymore, but that wasn’t her problem.

Alex had done some serious thinking on the train back home. It was clear that Finn wasn’t going to swoop in and live back home. He had hoped that at some point she’d take a greater interest in the house. That was one of the reasons he’d never really changed anything about it. So she could alter it to fit her life.

He wasn’t getting any younger. The least he could do was to make the house good to sell when he would no longer need it. There was a lot of deferred maintenance. Where had the years gone? How would he find someone who wanted to take on a job that big, on a limited budget, and even more, with a clear vision and respect for the house and its history? He’d have to do some research into that. He had time to come up with a plan. He didn’t fancy dying any time soon, and he didn’t have a lot of other things on his hands.

Finn took her time packing her things. It wasn’t that much. Again that notion of how much she’d given up of herself in this relationship.

The wedding was supposed to have been Saturday. On Wednesday she took her new car with all of her things from the house, she drove to Glasgow. She’d found cheap living accommodation. She had been willing to settle for the cheapest two-bedroom or large one bed she could find. The compromise with her father was that she paid a little more, but had a locked communal hall, and concierge services. It wasn’t in a very good neighbourhood, but she didn’t care about that much. Working with men, and being out and about in areas that didn’t know how to deal with women like her, meant that she had excellent self-defence skills. The run-in with the guy in the bar, before her wedding, had not been a first.

Because her new apartment was two beds, it also meant she could keep her gear at home and wouldn’t have to rent a separate storage locker for them. And with everything lined up, she’d called the agency that dispatched her, the first thing that Monday. She would hardly be home anyway.

She wouldn’t fly back to Canberra, to the team. But she’d be there on the next job, they’d promised her. The team was too good to split up. Dave, Eddie, Cameron, and Finn could blindly trust each other. An essential quality if you hung strapped in a harness, twenty meters in the air to fix something and the guys had to secure the line. They all had their specialities. The team had operated like that for over six years already. They’d been all over the world together. It did mean Finn had a few weeks off. All for the better. It gave her time to come to terms with her new existence. At first, it had been hard to see what her life away from Brent would look like. Being away from London and on her own made it easier though.

Alex had helped her move in. Not much had to be done. Some furniture had come from a charity shop. Lots of clothes, which Finn had started selling on e-bay the moment she’d unpacked them. Alex had noticed the casual wear when he helped to move her in. He’d not seen her like that for ages. And another time, when she came out to the estate, she wore a short skirt. She felt free and was happy to laugh.

“Wow, I’d ask you how you feel, but I can see you’re doing better.”

“I do.”

“It’s good to see you be yourself again.”

She nodded, knew what he meant. She wasn’t up to admitting that the whole thing with Brent had been a big mistake yet. “Why are you still here, dad?” She wanted to know. She looked around.

“I feel at home here. And I had hoped at some point you would want to move back here.”

Before she could answer, he stopped her. “No, I know you’re not. That’s why I’m looking for someone who will fix up this place, so you can sell it after I’m gone.”

“Dad…” She looked at her father. The man that had always been in the shadow of his wife. Who had quit his job when she needed looking after, and all friends and family had abandoned her. He had sacrificed his entire life for Finn and her mother. “I’m sorry. I tried.”

“I know you did, Sweetheart. It was my choice not to leave. When she was still alive. Or later. Not hers, not her family’s, and not yours.”

“Sometimes when the house is quiet, I can still hear her scream,” Finn admitted. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been there those last days.

“Me too. If anything, I’m glad Brent didn’t break you. He didn’t deserve you.”

“You know what, dad? I think you’re right. No more millionaires for me.”

Brent’s return from his vacation with Becky did not go unnoticed. He called Finn, and for the fun of it, she let him rant for several minutes about the safe and the car.

“You can’t just sell a man’s car, Finn. That’s mean. I thought that kind of thing would be beneath you.”

“It is. But the wedding had wiped out all of my savings. I needed to find a new place to live and a proper job, since the thing we had lined up for after the honeymoon wasn’t going to be enough to live off. Things like that take time. And you had all my papers up in that safe, without leaving me with the code.”

“You could have called me. I’d have helped you.”

“Probably. Now according to my solicitor…”

“Your solicitor?”

“Yes, we calculated the whole thing through. After the sale of the car and the money I took from the safe you still owe me…” He wouldn’t let her finish. “I owe you?”

“Yes. You cancelled the wedding, remember? You cheated on me. I’ve kindly agreed to pay half of what it had cost, so you still owe me. It wasn’t a cheap wedding.”

That made him back down. “If you’d rather go to court over this, that’s fine. The car was in my name. Good luck proving it was yours. And you cancelled the wedding. Jurisprudence showed that in all similar cases, the entire cost of the wedding had to be paid by the cancelling party.”

She could hear him gasp. “It’s your decision, of course. Just know I’m not willing to back down on this. I’ve bent to your ideas and will for four years. Not this time, Brent.”

“Does it have to end this way, Finn? Is this what you have become? A bitter old maid?”

“No, a free one. And one who finally sees what had been going on. What’s wrong? Becky not everything she’s cracked up to be? I thought her perfect figure and her perfect country club demeanour made her the perfect partner for you. Oh, right, she’s five months in. Getting fat and cranky, I presume.” Brent had always been the first to notice when she’d gained weight. The first to say it out loud. And not in an encouraging tone either.

“Finn, don’t talk about Becky that way. She’s…”

“You know, Brent, I don’t care what she is or is not. Let me know about the money. I’ll have my solicitor send it out to you. I have a plane to catch.” She’d had her little victory. Dragging it out would only diminish the experience. She’d fought, and she’d won.

“Finn!”

“Goodbye, Brent. I hope you’re happy with the choices you made.” Without giving him more time to answer, she hung up.

The next day she got an e-mail from him, telling he would give her the money and some extra if she were willing to sign the papers to get her name off the joint accounts quickly. Since she had to be in London anyway, over the next week, she went by his office to do so. He wasn’t there. She’d made sure of that. His secretary received her. They’d known each other pretty well.

“I’m very sorry about…”

“So am I. It’s not your fault though, the papers please?” Finn had taken extra care to dress inappropriately. A short skirt, black tights and shoes with chunky heels. A black T-shirt. Not the proper attire for a 36-year-old woman, but she didn’t care.

On her way out, she walked passed Brent’s father. He looked at her as if he saw a ghost. “No worries, sir. You’ll never have to see me again. Only came to sign me out of your lives.”

The money was in her bank account the very next day.

It was very tempting to go house hunting immediately. But Finn decided to stick to the original plan. Work like mad for a year and then look for something nice.