Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68390 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 342(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
“How did she pass?” Weland asks quietly.
“My aunt used to say my mom was reckless and irresponsible, which she did sometimes say. Well, she lived her life the opposite. She wanted to be around for her boys, and probably me too, I guess. But when it’s your time, it’s your time, though. She never told any of us she had cancer. Pancreatic cancer. She said goodbye in her own way, but none of us knew that was what she was doing. She shocked us all. She downsized the house and sold everything off. She said she wanted to retire and didn’t need a big place, and then she went on a vacation down to Mexico.
“She was getting treatment there, but she didn’t tell a soul. She ended up passing away down there, and my cousins…god, the oldest one is a real asshole, but he dealt with all of it. All the legal stuff and getting her body back here to bury. It was a nightmare. It was the one time in my life I actually felt sorry for Joseph. Lucas and Tony were wrecks too. My aunt left them all her savings divided between them and everything she hadn’t sold. But to me, she left her shares in the company, though she did put stipulations on it. If I didn’t get married within a year and stay married for at least five years to prove it was real and not just something to meet the parameters of her will, then her shares would be divided up amongst my cousins, also equally. At the end of five years, if I were still married, then they would be mine.”
Weland stops dead. Beans sits down and looks up at her, even though she did not give him a command. He waits patiently for her signal, but she looks at me with a gathering storm of fury building in her eyes. I don’t want her to release it here on the sidewalk, so I put up a hand.
“I know what that sounds like, and for someone who lived her life quite conservatively and unromantically, it’s wild and nonsensical, but it was what it was. I couldn’t let my cousins have it. Not what I had built from nothing. I was shocked when I read the will, so I did what I’d been doing for years. I went out to a few little bars in the middle of nowhere that had live music and then lost myself in it. It was the strangest thing. At four in the morning, I was driving around aimlessly, wondering how I was going to save my company and having the crisis to end all the meltdowns in the world.
“Then, I pulled over by this park. I got out and sat on a bench just to think. It was so quiet, and I had to wreck it. I pulled out my phone, and after a little bit of browsing, there you were. You. Singing. Your songs. An angel in a sea of despair. Smitty had been my lawyer for a while at this point, but he was also a friend. I skipped over everyone else—my assistants and the rest of the office—and called him. I wanted to know two things. If you were single and if you were willing to save me. For the former, I suppose anyone could have helped me find that out, but for the latter, I needed it to be entirely secret. Naturally, each of my cousins got a copy of the will, and they’re pretty eager to get their hands on those shares. Considering they’re worth a few million dollars a piece for them, it would probably have brought the greed out in anyone.”
“But for you to just announce you were getting married out of the blue, they must have known it was fake.”
We start walking again, passing a string of houses that all look the same. Literally, they’re just different colors, but at least a row of a hundred have the same design. Two stories with porches on the front and alternating red and yellow and dark blue.
“Not at all. I’d been so quiet and private for such a long time. I’d get tired of my aunt telling me to find someone, so one time, I told her I had someone, but it was my own business. There wasn’t actually anyone, and I hadn’t really ever dated seriously because I was so busy with work, college, and then building a company after that, but she didn’t have to know that. I was just so sick of her harping on it, so the lie slipped out. Maybe that’s why she made the stipulation in her will. Hoping I’d take my happiness seriously. Or maybe she knew I was lying. My cousins believed I was seeing someone, though, and it was only natural for me to get serious about it and accelerate things to meet the terms of the will. As long as I was married and stayed married, and it appeared real, they couldn’t do anything.”