“To my children, Charles Anthony George Junior and Winifred Elizabeth George,” the lawyer read, “I leave the contents of their childhood rooms.”
I snuck a glance at the curly-haired guy. He was looking at the woman on the other side of Nathan, an unconventionally beautiful ginger redhead with a heart-shaped face and mermaid-green eyes （his sister?）， who just shrugged and shook her head.
“To my brother, Roy Bingham Lake, and each of his children, Nathan, Sophia, Lily, and Henry, I leave fifty thousand dollars each, for a total of two hundred fifty thousand dollars to Roy Lake and family.”
OK, that seems kind of normal . . .
“The rest of my assets,” the lawyer read, “including, but not limited to, my stocks, bonds, IRA, the balance of my husband’s life insurance policy, proceeds from the sale of my business, my home and all its contents besides what I have already bequeathed to my children, I leave to Miss Ashley Brooks.”
I don’t remember exactly what went through my mind in that moment, but I think it was something like—
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK?
“Ashley, what just happened?” someone asked. I think it was Nathan. Or maybe I imagined it. Because that’s exactly what I was wondering.
Five sets of eyes locked in on me like Jedi fighter jets on the Death Star. As evidenced by my acting career, I was never one who thrived in the spotlight. So I pushed back my chair and got the hell out of there.
CHAPTER 35
* * *
WINNIE
Charlie and I drove home from the will reading in silence. I was upset, but not about being cut out of the will. I know it sounds crazy, but I didn’t want Mom’s money.
I had a degree in economics from Stanford. If I wanted to be fabulously wealthy, I could have hit up any number of my classmates for a highfalutin job with shitloads of stock options and made my own fortune. So why hadn’t I? On some level, I think knowing I could be Real Housewife rich without having to lift a finger had crippled me. Why get a job if I didn’t have to work? Why start a business when Mom just wanted to give me one? What was the point of jumping into the rat race when the trophy was already mine?
Strangely, I hadn’t known my assumption that I would someday inherit millions had paralyzed me until I found out it was wrong. It was suddenly so obvious. Now that Mom was gone, I had a raison d’être, an imperative to do something with my life. I felt motivated. I felt free. Unlike Mom, whose goal was nothing less than world domination, I’d only ever had modest aspirations. Start a flower shop. Teach high school English. Run a food truck. But pursuing a vocation as mundane as selling flowers would have irked the great Louisa George. She expected world domination. So rather than risk disappointing her, I didn’t even try.
But now I could do whatever I wanted, without the stink of Mom’s disappointment trailing behind me. What a relief! That’s not to say I didn’t grieve her. Mom may have been a gun-slinging Cruella de Vil, but she was my gun-slinging Cruella de Vil, and I loved her like a prisoner with Stockholm syndrome loves her captor. I was bone crushingly sad driving home from Beverly Hills that day, but not about the money. On the contrary, on that front I was downright relieved.
As we pulled onto the steep cul-de-sac where I’d learned to ride a bike （and what road rash is）， I thought about what it meant to no longer have parents. There was no longer anyone who always knew my whereabouts. No one to tell when I was leaving town, no one to call when I got home. There was no one to ask for advice （Should I get the travel insurance/anesthesia with my root canal/cheese on my Whopper?）。 People who don’t have parents—even shitty ones—don’t have anyone to corroborate their earliest memories, call them on their bullshit, care, or even notice, if they are royally screwing up their lives. Before I had someone to blame for my missteps. Now the buck stopped with me.
Gravel growled under Charlie’s tires as we turned into Mom’s distinctly uninviting driveway. The corners of Charlie’s mouth sloped down toward his chin like a sad circus clown, and I suddenly felt the urge to hug him. I couldn’t blame him for being angry. He had people who depended on him and would be pissed to high heaven that he wasn’t getting any money. Unlike me, he not only had assumed he would get it, he had been counting on it. I remember his telling comment after his fancy-pants wedding in which Mom had spent God knows how much to marry him off like the Duke of San Fernando Valley: “It’s not really a gift,” he’d said. “It’s a loan against my inheritance.” With entitled thoughts like that, it was no wonder he felt gobsmacked.