I sit down on her left. “You’re losing me already.”
Wesley does not sit. He leans against the front door, narrow eyed, arms folded protectively over his chest. I cannot get over the sight of him; it’s an out-of-body experience. It’s so weird to have to sit here and pretend I’m not freaking out.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Ruth begins, “but I, ah, was instructed to fudge the specifics of the will until you, Maybell, arrived at Falling Stars.” She turns to Wesley. “Which is why I dropped in on you. She said she was coming today, and I needed to be here when she arrived.”
Wesley looks as if his top and bottom molars are trying to crush each other. Aside from a small grunt, he says nothing.
Ruth decides I’m the easier person to focus on. “Violet thought about you every day. She wished she could have done more when you were growing up, but she was getting on in years and didn’t think she’d successfully win custody.”
It’s odd to hear that someone has, without my knowledge, felt concern over my well-being. It’s odd to think anyone out there cared enough to remember me, to think about me when I wasn’t physically right in front of them.
“Wesley,” Ruth continues, “Violet was so grateful for you. You really went above and beyond to take care of her, and I know in my heart she wouldn’t have lasted as long if you hadn’t come to Falling Stars.”
She clears her throat. “She loved you both, and wanted both of you to have the house. She couldn’t choose. The estate belongs to both of you.”
A thick silence expands. Wesley assesses me with new sharpness, as though before this statement I was inconsequential but now I require a closer look.
“Both of us,” I echo woodenly.
“I was ordered to tell each of you separately that you inherited the house, the land, the cabin, all of it. And then, once we were all together, that’s when I could come clean that you were equal inheritors.” She straightens her shoulders, expecting to be attacked, maybe. “I’m faithfully executing Violet’s directions, so please don’t hold this against me too much.”
Wesley stares past both of us and into a different dimension.
I’m stuck on a loop. “Both of us.”
Ruth nods. “The estate is fully paid for, but unfortunately there isn’t much left as far as financial inheritance. She left her vinyl record collection and ten thousand dollars to me, two thousand dollars to each of my three kids, and five thousand dollars plus her car to her nurse. Oh, and she left a few savings bonds to her mail carrier. After cremation costs and very, very generous donations to charities that were stipulated in the will, Violet has . . .” She squints, recollecting. “Thirty-one dollars and change left in her bank account.”
Victor Hannobar started off with a local flagship store (for wallets and handbags, mainly) that expanded into multiple stores throughout Tennessee and gradually built himself a luxury goods empire (by this point, Hannobar was best known for their watches), which he sold later in life for loads of money. Enough to keep the next several generations comfortable, if they’d had children, which they didn’t. “What happened?”
Ruth draws a breath before responding, but I have too many questions filling my head and have to interrupt. “How does being equal inheritors work? It’s not like we can”—I shoot a glance at Wesley—“both live in the house. Can we see the documents? Maybe she put down how to divide the assets, like . . . I get the manor and Ja—uh—Wesley gets the cabin.”
At this, Wesley’s soul returns to its human vessel. “Come again?”
“You’ll have to decide for yourselves how you want to divide the assets,” Ruth replies. “Violet didn’t dictate.” She retrieves the papers from her oversized handbag and shows us. At the bottom of each page, in tiny eight-point-font footnotes, my aunt has gone to purposeful lengths to make this inheritance as thorny and inconvenient as possible.
“I will say,” Ruth says to her stunned audience, “that you don’t have any existing debts, but from now on you’re responsible for insuring the property and for paying taxes on it.”
My jaw drops. I’ve never owned my own home before, so this didn’t even occur to me. “How much is that going to cost?”
“It all depends. If you sell the property—”
“No,” Wesley and I say at the same time. Then we narrow our eyes at each other.
“—you’re going to run into some high costs in taxes. That’s how it works with inherited homes. It’s cheaper for beneficiaries to keep them than to sell.” She loses me when she starts talking about capital gains tax, but I enter the chat again when I hear, “Making Falling Stars your primary residence is the best decision, tax-wise. But I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do. Now, Violet, on the other hand . . .” She unfolds a sheet of lilac stationery and walks over to the wall. As she tears off a few pieces of Scotch tape and fusses with the paper, Wesley pivots and blasts me with his powers of intimidation until all that remains of me is my ghost.
“I’ll buy you out.” Brusque. Factual.
“What? No way.”
“Ruth told me I was the only inheritor, so I’ve already made plans. There’s so much I want to do with this place, improvements I’ve always wanted to make, but Violet wouldn’t listen to my suggestions. Let me take it off your hands. I’ll fix up the estate, get it appraised after renovations are finished, and you can have half of whatever the house is worth.” He’s thinking quickly but isn’t adept at persuasion. Instead of soft, careful coaxing, his words fire out of a machine gun. “We’ll draw up a contract for a payment plan.”
Is he out of his mind?
“I’m not giving up ownership,” I sputter. “This is my aunt’s property, so I think it should stay in the family.”
His head falls back a fraction, unintentionally distracting me with the column of his throat, Adam’s apple pronounced. “Your definition of family is a little strange. I’ve lived here for four and a half years, but I have never seen you before. What kind of niece visits her aunt only after she’s died, and only then because she’s getting presents?”
My face heats. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do with this what you will,” Ruth announces tiredly in the background. In my peripheral vision I notice she’s taped the lilac stationery to the wall. “You aren’t legally obligated to honor it. But speaking as Violet’s friend and not as the executor of her estate, I believe it would be wrong not to.”
I’m about to ask her for clarification when Wesley takes a step closer to me and the words in my throat evaporate. He’s at least six three or six four, but that dark, burning demeanor adds an extra ten feet. The longer our gazes hold, the lower the ceilings drop, walls shrinking to box us in. “The manor’s in horrible condition,” he says with quiet but fierce intensity. “A fire hazard. You can’t even turn the heat on until it’s undergone an inspection by the fire department. You don’t want this mountain of problems, I promise you. Give me a few months. After the appraisal—”