CHAPTER 10

While they were entering her house after another quiet car ride, Beth finally said, "I should probably just give you a key. I think you drive my car more than I do."

"Okay, we can get a copy made tomorrow if you want." Carlton said as he hung up their coats.

She shook her head, "Nah, I should have a spare in my room. I'm going to go look for it while I get changed."

"Okay," He watched her go into the living room and up the stairs. Once she was out of sight, Carlton pulled out his phone. He only had a text message from Shawn asking him if he enjoyed all the rain and hoped that they were prepared for the snow. Shaking his head, Carlton dialed a number that he had gotten yesterday and waited for the person to pick up.

He only had to wait through 2 rings before a breathless voice answered, "This is Amy."

"Hello Amy, it's Carlton. Is this a bad time?"

Amy laughed, "No, it's fine. Adam is currently running around the living room, trying to get me to chase him, but I can use the break. What's up?"

Checking to make sure that Beth wasn't down yet, Carlton sat at the kitchen island. "Well, I was wondering what you can tell me about your grandmother, specifically how Beth handled her death."

There was silence for a few seconds before she replied solemnly, "How much do you know already?"

"Well, a couple months ago, she told me about the accident and how she had to endure psychiatric sessions. She mentioned that she lost some of her passion for music."

"That's putting it lightly." Amy sighed as Carlton heard movement on the other end of the phone. "Adam, why don't you play with your mini piano. Beth gave that to him for his birthday last November."

"That was nice of her."

"Yeah. Dan almost got him the same thing when he found a rocking horse instead." Carlton heard the pounding of keys as Amy continued, "That was a rough time for Beth. She didn't just lose some passion for music, she lost passion for life. She withdrew from everything and everybody. Now, to people who didn't know her well, like that so-called shrink, they just thought she was going through the normal stages of grief, especially since she was a shy, quiet kid to begin with. But to me and a few of her closest friends, we knew differently. Every night for weeks, she would cry herself to sleep, usually after she thought that I was asleep. She's always been a considerate person and never wanted to burden people. After about 3 weeks of this, Suzie, Wendy and I held an intervention. We told her that she needed to pull herself together and forgive herself, for it was in no way her fault. She broke down some more and we just sat there as she let it all out, sometimes rambling about unrelated topics. Once she calmed down, we made a plan for getting her caught up on schoolwork since she was less than a month from graduating and was in danger of failing. She seemed to be okay after that, not to the level that she was before, but still better. I was worried about her not going to college, but she's not like me. She's not meant to be doing the normal college thing and then get a 9-5 job once she got a degree. She's always been this sensitive soul, a free-spirit. I'm surprised that it took her so long to 'run off' as my mother put it." Amy laughed. "I bet I've told you way more than what you wanted to know, huh?"

"No, it's fine. I mean, I knew about her being a free spirit, but it's interesting to get someone else's opinion about her, especially from someone who has know her all her life."

"Well, not her whole life. I mean, I am 10 months younger than her."

Carlton groaned as he rubbed his face, "Sweet Lady Justice, you two are related!"

"Thanks!" Amy laughed. "Listen, I got to get back to my little terror before he gets into trouble. But did you guys want to have dinner with us tonight?"

"It depends, is your whole family coming?"

"Oh no, I wouldn't make you suffer through that again so soon, Saturday will be interesting enough! No, I was just thinking that Adam, Dan and I can come over. Since Beth is sick, I'll stop somewhere on the way and maybe we can break out a deck of cards or something."

"Okay, but Beth has warned me about playing certain games against you."

"What? That little brat! Oh well, we'll still have fun. Talk it over with Beth and let me know by 5. *CRASH* Gotta go, bye!" Amy hung up quickly before Carlton had a chance to respond.

Shaking his head, Carlton looked towards the stairs. It had been almost 10 minutes and Beth wasn't down yet. He gave her a few more minutes before he went upstairs to investigate. The door to her bedroom was shut, so he knocked. Getting no response, he slowly opened the door.

Beth was curled up on the bed with Murphy against her back and a photo album in front of her. She had already changed and had even gotten out a tin of about 10 keys, which was sitting on her end table. Deciding to just let her sleep, Carlton grabbed the afghan blanket off the chair and placed it over her.

Going into his room, Carlton pulled out his laptop to see if anything interesting had happened in Santa Barbara since he left.

Carlton was just about to respond to an email from Shawn when Beth sleepily came in and sat next to him on the bed. She rested her head on his shoulder and just watched him type for the next few minutes, sniffling occasionally. Sparing a glance at her, Carlton reprimanded Shawn about wasting department resources and said that when he's on vacation, he would appreciate a break from Shawn's shenanigans.

He was about to click send when Beth reached over and started typing, 'Hey Shawn, I hope you're not getting into too much trouble without me, although I guess you have to find something to occupy yourself with since Gus is also away. I wish you could be out here with us, I know that you would enjoy spending time with Amy. Anyways, could you give Carlton a break until he gets back? I'm giving him enough trouble as it is. Thanks! Lots of Love, Beth.' She then preceded to click send before he could edit it.

"Do you mind?" Carlton growled as he tried to take the laptop back.

"Nope, not at all. Is there anything else you wanted to do, or can I turn this off?"

Carlton sighed as he let go. "I assume that you have something else planned then?"

Beth nodded as she set the laptop aside. "Sort of. I wanted to keep working on the basement. I mean, mostly it's deciding what to keep and what to give away. I think that I cleaned out all the junk a couple years ago when we had a really bad snowstorm and I was stuck inside for almost a week. Talk about cabin fever! The city didn't plow my street until the 4th day and my car was in the shop so I had to wait another couple days until one of my siblings were available to pick me up. Anyways, I digress. If we spend about 2-3 hours on it a day, we should get the basement sorted by the end of the week. What do you think?"

"That sounds fine. But Amy wants to know if the 3 of them could come over for dinner tonight. I'm suppose to let her know in the next couple hours."

"Oh, well am I suppose to make something? Because I don't think that we have enough of anything for 5 people, except maybe chicken nuggets."

"She said that they would pick something up on the way."

"Okay. How about I'll call her and we can meet in the basement in about 5 minutes, okay?"

"Sure."

Beth nodded as she got off the bed and headed towards her bedroom.

An hour and a half later, Carlton groaned as he pushed a box towards the give away stack. "How the hell do you have so much useless crap?"

Beth laughed as she divided the stuff in her box. "I don't know, I think about 5 of the boxes are Christmas presents that I've just been too nice to give away. Wait until we get into the next room! It is filled with music and craft projects, some half finished."

Carlton groaned as he pulled another box towards him. "If you don't watch it, I might have to charge you for my services. I'm suppose to be on vacation, everyone keeps telling me to relax, yet you make me do all this work."

"I know!" Beth huffed before sniffling. "If I could, I would just throw this all in a storage locker and come back to it when I'm feeling up to it! But that would only be postponing the inevitable and racking up a huge bill. I'm going to have enough problems paying for the gas and U-Haul rental for the trip back, let alone hotel rooms and food." Beth gasped as she covered her mouth. "Shoot, I wasn't suppose to tell you that!"

Carlton looked at her quizzically, "Are you having money problems?"

She blushed as she fidgeted with the box, avoiding Carlton's gaze. "Yeah, well the gas was a lot more expensive than I anticipated and a few of the hotels I stayed at on the way here were pretty packed because of spring breaks and only had some of the more expensive rooms available. Evan has me set up to get a paycheck every two weeks, like all his other employees. I'm due to be paid this Friday, but since I'm obviously not there, I can't pick up my check until we get back. I was thinking of asking Amy tonight if I could borrow some money."

"And why didn't you just tell me?"

She sighed, "Because I was embarrassed. It's not something that my family talks about, money problems. I'm not even sure how to bring it up with Amy."

They sat in silence for a few seconds until Carlton coughed and said, "I can cover it."

"No, you don't have to, you shouldn't have to." Beth whined as she finally turned to him. "You do enough, I couldn't ask this of you!"

"You're not, I'm offering."

"But you're on vacation! You shouldn't have to worry about it."

"Yes I'm on vacation, but think of all the money that I'm saving by staying here with you instead of a hotel."

"But you've already paid for the groceries and never let me pay when we go out to eat. And you're letting me stay at your house for free and…"

"Will you stop!" Carlton snapped.

Beth noticeably flinched as she turned away from him, mumbling, "Sorry." Frisco lifted his head up from his position at the door and growled at Carlton.

Carlton took a deep breath before gently placing a hand on Beth's shoulder. He ignored her tensing up and said quietly, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you. I guess these last couple days have been very stressful, but I shouldn't take it out on you."

Beth nodded as she turned towards him but kept her head down. "It's okay, I shouldn't have kept going. I just have this really bad habit of not accepting help from others, especially when it comes to money." She took a deep breath and finally looked him in the eye. "I really do appreciate the offer and guess that I'll have to accept it. But as soon as I can, I am paying you back for half, no exceptions."

When she gave him a stern look, Carlton couldn't help but laugh. "Okay, but only when you can afford it. I don't want you to not pay your health insurance or something because of me."

"Okay. Now that that's settled, I need to go take a shower. Between all the dust down here, being sick and it being a certain time of the month, I feel disgusting."

Carlton made a face as he pushed a box to the side and stood up. "Have you ever heard of the phrase 'too much information' before?"

"Yeah, but making you uncomfortable is fun!"

He offered her a hand up and sighed, "At least I know that you're feeling better."

"Yeah, a bit. Thank you Nurse Carly!" Beth grinned before hurrying out of the room when Carlton glared at her. He then just shook his head and followed her laughter upstairs.