A new alert blasts out of my phone, this one from the National Weather Service issuing a blizzard warning and snow squall. What the hell is a snow squall? Is that some kind of bird? Outside the window, the world is pure white. I hang my head in my hands and cry, I need to get home and talk to someone before it’s too late, but I guess I’m stuck here for the night or until the weather clears and I can drive my shit box of a car out of here alive.
Chapter 3
Vaughn
It began snowing early this morning. Soft, fat flakes swirling down like feathers, leaving a blanket of white over everything. I watched it from my father’s study as my mother, sister and I waited for the executor of his will and all his lawyers to leave. They’ve said enough. It’s over.
It’s been two weeks since my father went for his morning run, never to return. My mother spent the majority of that time in this study staring at his empty chair, cursing under her breath. Even though Botox froze her features long ago, her animosity toward my dead father was loud and clear. Is that one of the steps of grief? Being so full of rage with the person who died? It isn’t his fault. How could it be? Maybe she really isn’t angry with my father, maybe she’s just bitter about the entire situation. I mean, who gets married thinking they’d be a widow before the age of fifty? Not Margaret Montgomery, that’s for sure. She got married thinking she was going to be a billionaire’s wife and Silas Montgomery would take care of her until the end of time.
At his memorial service she threw one of those metal folding chairs at his casket and had to be carried out. The press had a field day recording the entire stunt. My sister, Chloe, stuffed her full of Valium to get her back inside the car so her driver could bring her home. I was barely able to stomach his funeral myself, but this shit seems worse, the executor and lawyers explaining my father’s last wishes.
More final.
The grand finale where everything in the Montgomery family got ripped open and poured out. Every one of my father’s secrets put on display for all to see.
My mother trembles where she sits, watching the lawyers gather their belongings.
Each of us received a small white envelope containing our inheritance, or in this case, lack thereof. Fuck if I know when my father planned this all out, he was only fifty-three years old. I never really thought about him dying or what came after. I guess I always assumed my mother would get everything.
In the end, all his money went to charity. Every cent. My mother and sister both opened their envelopes to their entire inheritance being a charitable donation to one of my father’s favorite causes. Even the Montgomery family estate was donated directly to a children’s charity with explicit instructions to renovate it into a children’s hospital, accompanied by a generous lump sum to help them accomplish the task to completion. I’m the only one in this room who received a real inheritance. My envelope, smaller than the others, contained a deed to a plot of land on the top of a mountain.
Real estate no one in the family knew about.
There were other envelopes too, I saw. A small handful without names or labels affixed to them. Secrets, I suppose. I’m sure my father died with a myriad of them.
My mother clears her throat, “Are you really telling me that’s all? That there’s nothing I can do?” Her voice cracks and tears spill down her cheeks. My mother is a young version of forty-eight. She keeps herself fit and surgically altered, but these last few weeks have seemed to age her to where no plastic surgery will ever be able to correct. “I was married to that man for twenty-six years and you’re telling me that he’s giving all my money away?”
“We are truly sorry for your loss, Mrs. Montgomery, but these were his last wishes.” I’ve never seen lawyers exit a room so fast. My father planned his entire net worth to be sent out of reach from his family—he found every loophole to basically disinherit us, and come out looking like a fucking saint doing it. My mother stops trembling, now she’s full-on shaking.
“Vaughn, what did he leave you?” she demands.
I slip the small envelope in my back pocket. “Same as you.” I need to see the plot of land for myself before I share the knowledge of it with anyone else. My father and I had an estranged relationship for the last few years. We hardly spoke. I left his tyranny the second I turned eighteen and made a spot for myself in the world as far away from his business and his bullshit as possible.
“Vaughn? Can there really be no way of contesting his will?” Chloe whispers from next to my mother, her skin pale and eyes wide.
“It didn’t sound like it, did it?” I walk away from the window and rub my hands over my face. I need to get out of here before either one of them decides it’s too dangerous for me to be driving in the snow. They’d nag me until I promised to stay, and I can think of nothing worse than being stuck here with both of them ramming their feelings and thoughts down my throat. “Why not give your own lawyer a call? See if there’s anything he could appeal or do—”
“You always take your father’s side. How can this not bother you?” My mother pulls herself up off the couch and brings her hands against her chest. “Your self-centered piece-of-shit father left me with nothing. How am I supposed to survive?”
“You have no money of your own?”
“Of course I do, but your father was worth almost five hundred million a year. That’s the kind of life I’m used to.”
“I guess you’re going to have to try and get used to another kind of life now, Mom. I’m not sure if this is because you’re grieving or you really hated him, but greed doesn’t look well on you.” I grab my things from off the table and pause at the door. “What about life insurance? Didn’t he have any?”
“Nothing. He left me nothing. Just gave everything away to strangers. What am I supposed to do, get a job?”
I leave the room not knowing what else to say. Yeah, I’m surprised. Utterly shocked my father left nothing for my mother. I know the last decade of their marriage wasn’t great, but leaving her with nothing seems callous, even for him.
Everyone inside the walls of the Montgomery estate knew it was a horrible relationship, but not disinheritance sort of horrible.
On the surface, to everyone outside, their marriage was complacent. They showed up to functions and parties together. Took pictures and did whatever was socially demanded of them. But in reality, behind closed doors, they’d stopped respecting one another, loving each other. They never fought, they just tiptoed around each other and us with a boiling resentment that spread through the entire family like a contagious disease.
My mother never forgave him for his infidelity with Libby Radcliffe. Neither did Chloe or I, for that matter. But my mother stayed with him and used his wealth as if it were his retribution for all he’d done.
As I slide my arms into my coat, I remote start the car. The cold draft that sweeps through the front foyer sends a shiver across my shoulders. This storm wasn’t supposed to hit us until later tonight. “The weather guy is a fucking moron.”
“Mr. Montgomery, sir. Do you need me to clean the snow from your windshield?”
“Yes, please, Willard, thank you.” I pull out my phone while I wait and type the address to the parcel of land my father left me. The GPS says it’s a fifty-six-minute drive away. I don’t know what it can be, and it may very well be a stupid plan to drive there in the beginning of a blizzard, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. Hopefully it will end up being something my mother could do something with.