“So? How did it go?” she asked. There was no nervousness in her voice. No concern. Her tone indicated that she expected good news. So that’s what I decided to give her.
“Well, my mom’s in the ground,” I started. She would be relieved to hear that part was over, that I wasn’t tasked with calling funeral homes and shopping for caskets. “She’d arranged everything, y’know, before.”
I felt emotion rise up my throat. My mother was dead. As disgusted as I was at how she had left things, it still hurt to lose her, like a doctor cutting off a diseased limb.
“Well thank God for that,” Marcela said.
“It’s going to take a few more days to sort through the will,” I said. “The administration of the details is a little bit complicated.” I had rehearsed how to say this, and it came out like a bad actor might read a script.
“But she left it all to you and Winnie?” she asked, and I suddenly got scared. I hadn’t expected her questions to be so direct. But I still didn’t have to lie, not exactly.
“No, some other family members were named,” I said. “My uncle Roy and his kids.” OK, that was true. But the next question was not so easy to answer with a half-truth.
“But you and Win got the bulk of it.” She said this not as a question but as a presumed fact. Because I had instilled her with the expectation that my mother was loaded and my sister and I were her beloved beneficiaries.
“Of course.” And there was the Stupid Lie. I should never have told her that, but what else could I say? No, we’re still penniless? Marcela had detested my mother when she was alive. I didn’t want her to hate her in death, too. Yes, my mom was difficult, demanding, critical, and controlling, but I still wanted to protect her memory. Telling my wife that we had been cut out of the will would have crushed her, and our marriage along with it.
“Do you need me to come?” she asked. I imagined her glee in thinking we were set for life. Of course she was willing to rush to my side—to show herself as the dutiful wife, worthy of the fortune that had just been bequeathed to her.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I just need a few more days to tie up some loose ends.”
“I know this is hard, Charlie,” she said, in the most sympathetic tone she could muster. “But things are going to be better now. In your dark moments, think about that.”
As I thought about the relief my wife must have been feeling—we could finally get out of debt, stop working crazy hours, get a new house with a proper kitchen and a yard—shame reached up and seized me like quicksand. I shouldn’t have lied to my wife. I had no idea if Ashley Brooks would do right by us, or if we were screwed.
I knew I’d just made a big mistake. What I didn’t know was that my mistake would be murderous.
CHAPTER 37
* * *
NATHAN
Charlie was slumped on the living room sofa when I got to the house, palms pressed in his eye sockets like he was trying to keep his head from exploding.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” he asked when he saw me. I had hung back at the lawyer’s office to get a copy of the will, which was just as devastating on the second read as it had been on the first. “Do you really think this Ashley person will give the money back?”
I wanted to reassure him, but I honestly had no idea what Ashley would do. I barely knew her! And her ability to snag Louisa’s fortune less than forty-eight hours after meeting her was troubling to say the least. Not that I thought she’d manipulated her or anything. Louisa was the manipulator here. Or so I was convinced.
“I’ll talk to her,” I promised my cousin, though I had no idea what I would say. I wanted to be the princely new boyfriend, but thanks to this crap stunt Louisa had pulled, I was going to have to be the mediator, the negotiator, the peacemaker, the jerk. We have a saying in the legal profession: you know you’ve achieved a fair and equitable deal if, upon agreeing to it, both parties are a little disappointed. Having my cousins and the woman I’d hoped might be my girlfriend resent me forever was my inevitable fate now. So much for bringing the family together.
“You know why she hated us, right?” Winnie said, appearing in the doorway. I didn’t, so I just shrugged. “Well, perhaps it’s time?”
“Don’t,” Charlie warned.
“If he’s going to help us, he has a right to know.”
I got a little quiver of nervousness. “Know what?” I asked. Whatever had caused the rift between Louisa and her kids had been a tightly held secret. I didn’t think my father even knew what it was.