by Dee J. Adams
“Great. But she’s not really my cat. She just managed to get attacked on my patio.”
He nodded and smiled as if he understood completely. “But you’re taking her home right? She can go home. Nothing’s broken. I stitched her up. She’ll be moving slow for a while, but she’s a tough cookie. Living one of her many lives, I guess. Judging from her teeth, she’s about two. If she spreads out the drama, she should be around a long time.” He made notes in a chart.
Sighing, Leo tried again. “I don’t really have room in my life for a cat. I can’t take care of her right now…”
“Ah. Shooting a new film?” the doctor asked, glancing up.
Didn’t he wish? He’d been up for two big budget films and both had gone to other actors. He’d been banking on at least one of them to come through because he needed the money. “Uh. Well. No. Not at the moment.”
“Going out of town?” the man asked.
Leo hadn’t felt this cornered since standing in the high school principal’s office after he’d been caught feeling up Mary Kate McGee behind the bleachers. “Uh…no.” Shit. Why didn’t he lie?
“Oh, well good. It shouldn’t be a big problem.” The vet kept talking then. Explaining the injuries and the treatment and the stitches, and Leo couldn’t get a word in edgewise. To compound the problem, the cat kept looking at him like he was a god. And the damn thing purred every time he set a finger on her. She looked pretty pitiful with a big white bandage wrapped around her torso. With all that black fur sticking out on either end, she reminded him of an Oreo.
“You can bring her back here or take her to a vet in a week or so to have the stitches removed.”
“A week or so?” Leo’s eyes bugged out wide. “You don’t understand. I don’t want the cat. I’m not taking care of the cat.”
Meow.
Dammit. Leo addressed the cat. “Look. I don’t have any cat things, okay? No food, no milk. No cat things.”
“Cats really shouldn’t drink milk,” the vet said, narrowing his brows. “I’m happy to send you home with a sample bag of food. Should last you a few days. It’ll give you time to get to the store.”
Clenching his jaw, Leo held back his frustration. He couldn’t blurt out that he didn’t have the money to feed an extra mouth. That realization pissed him off. Plenty of people had less than he did and they not only fed pets, but kids too. So what if he’d never had any animals before. So what if he never saw himself in this position. So what if he was a dog person and not a cat person. Ugh. “Fine. I’ll take the cat.”
Minutes later, he got a crash course in kitty care and the doctor even gave him a small gray mesh carrier and a blue plastic litter box along with the food. Great.
Leo got back in the car after setting the cat paraphernalia in the trunk and looked down at the cat. “Well…you need a name,” he told her. “No. Scratch that. You won’t be staying long enough to need one. “This is a temporary situation, cat. Maybe Vivienne will take you home.” He still kept in touch with his former assistant. “She’s nice. Most of the time,” he amended. He started the car and headed home.
Chapter Two
“Hi. Kim Jacobs. Nice to meet you.” Kim took in the deep maroon and gold accents in the posh office as she shook the lawyer’s hand. A large mahogany desk sat on one side with a sofa and two large leather seats placed adjacent. It was a power office and nothing like what she expected for Tucson, Arizona. She caught her reflection in the mirror on the sidewall and looked away from the faint darkness beneath her eyes. What a month.
Hell, she never expected to be in a lawyer’s office at all this trip, but once again, life had laughed at her plans and dictated a whole new path.
“Nice to meet you. Your aunt spoke very highly of you.” Gary Cohen, her aunt’s lawyer, gestured to the empty chair next to her cousin, Wilson. “Have a seat,” he said, opening the last button of his dark suit coat and taking the chair across from both of them at his desk.
Wilson gave her a quick hug before they faced Mr. Cohen. He pushed up his John Lennon glasses in a nervous tell that Kim had come to recognize, and her own stomach took a recently familiar spin. His sandy blond hair still made him look like a surfer dude despite never spending a day at the beach. The circles under his eyes had become more prominent in the last few weeks and showed the strain on his handsome face. His tan sport jacket and pressed jeans marked a change from the usual worn T-shirts she’d seen him wearing lately. But they’d both been working hard in recent weeks.
Kim had no idea her aunt had been so sick. They’d talked often over the years, but Carolyn had been closed mouth about her cancer diagnoses until it was too late. It still came as a shock.
Kim and Wilson were the last two of their immediate family.
“Can I get anything for either of you before we get started? Water or coffee?” Mr. Cohen asked. They both declined and Kim noticed the lawyer openly staring at her. When she lifted her eyebrows in question, he stammered. “I’m sorry. You just look so much like your aunt. The resemblance is uncanny.”
This wasn’t news to Kim. Their whole lives the family joked how Kim should’ve been Carolyn’s daughter instead of Susan’s. Though they were thirty years apart, pictures of them growing up showed them nearly identical at every age. The lawyer flushed and lifted the manila folder. “I’ll just…” He opened the top. “All right then. Let’s get started.”
Feeling even greener around the edges, Kim crossed her legs and took a deep breath. Her aunt didn’t have much so this shouldn’t take long. Now with the funeral over, she could get back to Indiana and back to her business partner and her end of much neglected business.
Mr. Cohen pulled out the pages inside the folder as he spoke to them. “Your aunt had a trust, so you won’t have to worry about a probate. She was a smart woman. I respected her greatly.” The papers crackled as he flipped through them. “Miss Jacobs, I’m not sure if you’re aware that your aunt made you the trustee of her trust.”
A trust? Kim’s stomach took a full on header as she glanced at Wilson. He looked just as surprised. “No. I didn’t know. I didn’t realize she had a trust.” Most people didn’t think ahead to protect their property from taxes.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “She did. She hoped to make it easier for her family when she passed and she entrusted you to make sure her wishes were carried out.” He adjusted his glasses and looked down. “Let’s see. Here it is.” He began reading.
“Well, no one lives forever, so if you’re reading this, then my time here is over. Don’t mourn my life, kids. Celebrate it. And celebrate your own lives. I want you to know that I loved you both as if you were my own. You may be my sisters’ kids, but we all have the same blood. That includes you, Wilson. I never let your adoption keep me from thinking of you as family. I’ve thought long and hard about what I’ve done, so I don’t want you to think that the decision I made came easily or without a certain amount of heartache. But I did what I thought was right. It’s the way I lived my life and the way I’m doing it in death.”
Next to her, Wilson fidgeted in his chair and pushed up his glasses again.
“What I’m about to say may sound harsh, but I think it’s important so you know where I’m coming from.”
Kim couldn’t begin to guess why all the build-up. Her aunt owned a modest—albeit beautiful—house in an upper middle class neighborhood in Arizona. Nothing too fancy. She’d always been a frugal woman and Kim had learned to live similarly after losing a fortune a handful of years ago.
Mr. Cohen continued reading.
“Kim, for many years I worried about you. If a party existed, you went to it. If a man offered you something, you took it. I always wanted the best for you, but you never gave yourself any credit and it hurt me to watch. I was proud when you got your own business off the ground and I thought you’d come into your own and gain confidence. But it took the worst to bring out the best in you. You lost everything, but I think you found your self-respect. You’ve come a
long way in a few short years and I’m so proud of you.”
Mr. Cohen flicked his gaze up and smiled before looking back at the pages in his hand.
Heat flushed Kim’s cheeks and her stomach rolled at the mini recap of her life until now.
The lawyer went on,
“Wilson, This is going to come as a shock to you. But I know you know my secret.”
Kim glanced at Wilson whose tired brown eyes had gone round. Aunt Carolyn had a secret? Was she talking about the trust or something besides that?
“But, Wilson. I know your secret.”
Kim stared at her older cousin, the only son of the oldest sister. Seemed everybody had a secret, but her. Apparently her quick rise and quicker fall had been family headline news and thanks to Carolyn’s letter, her cousin and this lawyer knew about her party ways so many years ago too. Nope, no secrets here.
The lawyer read on.
“I know why your wife and daughter left you. I know why you lost your house. I know why you began calling and coming over so often the last few years, offering to go to the market or run errands for me.”
Mr. Cohen paused.
“I know you have a gambling addiction just as you know that I have money.”
Now it was Kim’s eyes that went wide as she looked at her cousin. Wilson had a gambling problem? Aunt Carolyn had money? How much money? Living in Indiana sure kept her out of the loop.
“Wilson…I know you hoped to profit from my death. Don’t worry, I know you didn’t kill me. The cancer did that well enough. But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t enable your addiction with money. I can’t do that to you. What I will do is give you a roof over your head. Free and clear. Wilson, you get my house and all of its contents. Maybe all the heirlooms will help you realize the importance of family. The house is worth about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars since I remodeled. It’s not huge, but it’s a good place and you don’t have a mortgage. Whether you take out a mortgage or sell it to fund your addiction is up to you and your decision to make. I loved that house and hope you have many happy years there if you choose to keep it.”
The lawyer cleared his throat as Wilson’s mouth dropped open wide.
“But, Wilson, I know that’s why you started sucking up to me. You didn’t think I’d find out that you answered my phone and talked to my accountant, but I did. He told me you asked questions, pretending that you were relaying them from me. But that was never the case, was it? You just wanted to know in case I could loan you money. I was disappointed in you. I wanted to see you quit gambling while I was alive, but I only watched you lose everyone around you and nearly everything you owned. I’m sorry, honey, but I won’t enable more of that behavior.”
Kim’s heart pounded as if she’d run five miles and sweat prickled under her arms.
The lawyer continued.
“I’ve set up a trust fund for Amanda and she’ll receive five hundred thousand dollars upon her twenty-fifth birthday.”
Kim’s eyes nearly bugged out. Five hundred thousand dollars? God, if Wilson’s daughter invested that right, she could be set for life. Where did all that money come from?
Mr. Cohen glanced up before going back to the will.
“I’ve missed seeing her since Chloe moved out of town, but I believe she’s in a better environment than she was here. She still has a lot of growing up to do and I hope you become a man she can look up to.”
Wilson looked as pale as a cotton ball.
“To my niece, Kim…”
Another flush chased up her cheeks and she focused on the lawyer. Her turn.
“As I said, I watched you grow and I couldn’t be more proud of you. You decided to live your life and be an independent woman instead of thinking you needed a man to give you what you wanted. I leave the rest of my estate to you, which includes stocks, bonds and liquid assets equaling about ten million dollars.”
Ten what?
The lawyer went on, but Kim didn’t hear a single word. She felt Wilson’s penetrating stare and couldn’t look at him. It was too much to take in, too hard to believe.
The lawyer must have finished because he set the papers on his desk and stood up. “I’ll get you both some water and give you a few minutes to talk. I’ll be right back.”
Talk? Talk? Like she could come up with words? Was he kidding?
The door closed behind him and Kim finally chanced a look to Wilson.
“What just happened here?” he questioned with such emphasis that Kim felt she had to answer.
“I have no idea.” A few weeks ago, not long after she got home from her trip to Los Angeles, her aunt had mentioned not feeling well. Kim had flown to Arizona, surprised to find her robust aunt flat on her back and frail. She’d lost a ton of weight and her skin had been pasty and white. Her aunt had died a few weeks later. That made all three sisters gone, and she and Wilson were the only ones left. Kim had been under the impression that they’d all lived middle class lives—but maybe the one sister with no kids could’ve lived life large, but just chose not to. Kim had a few questions of her own. “How long has she had money? When did you find out she had money? She rarely spent a dime. I don’t get it.”
“How do you think I feel? I’ve been living in the same city, helping her for years and she does this?” Wilson shot to his feet and started pacing. “Unbelievable. She may as well have sliced off my balls one at a time.”
Kim cringed at the picture. “It’s not that bad, Wilson. You have the house. It’s beautiful.”
His brown-eyed gaze slid to hers slowly. “You’re kidding me, right? She just unloaded ten million dollars on you. Ten million!”
“She also gave a huge chunk to Amanda.” Her young cousin was only eight, so by the time she came into her inheritance it would be worth a lot more if invested correctly. Kim might be able to help with that.
Wilson lifted his arms in a WTF gesture. “Great. Five hundred grand that we can’t use for college, which means a bunch more debt. Can’t wait.” His sarcasm wasn’t lost on her. “It’s all a little unbalanced, don’t you think?”
“She outlined why she did it,” Kim said quietly. God, what if she hadn’t straightened herself out four years ago? Would her aunt have left all her money to Amanda, to a charity or one of the other distant cousins they’d lost touch with?
“I don’t believe this,” Wilson said, clenching his fists and pacing some more. “Chloe left me, then I lost the house a few years ago, and Carolyn could’ve fixed it with a little loan.” He shook his head, stuck his hands through his thick hair and took a deep breath.
Mr. Cohen returned with glasses filled with ice water. “Here you go,” he said, handing them over.
Kim nearly guzzled hers in one swallow. This was too surreal. The rest of the meeting went by in a blur as the lawyer talked about the trust and the details involved. A half hour later, Wilson and she stood at their cars parked in front of the building.
“I’m sorry, Wilson. But you know I didn’t expect this.”
He snorted. “Huh. That makes two of us.”
“I didn’t know about…” She couldn’t even say it.
“My gambling problem,” he mumbled. He looked totally defeated and Kim felt terrible. A rumble sounded from his chest as he stared at the sky and yelled, “I stopped! I told you I stopped!” He slammed his palm on the roof of the car. “I ran my ass off for her for the last three years. I dropped everything at a moment’s notice for her and all she did was leave me her house?” He finally stopped and dropped his head. Then he started laughing. He laughed so hard, his eyes filled with tears. “Her house? She left me her house? And she left you ten million dollars.” He pulled himself together and finally studied her with an eerie calmness. “How’s it feel to be a millionaire, Kimbo?”
A millionaire. It didn’t seem possible. “Honestly, I don’t really think this is for real. I think it’s a dream and I’m about to wake up any minute and discover—”
“It’s not!” he s
houted and Kim almost flinched at his outburst. Then he wiped the spit off his chin. “It’s not a dream,” he said more calmly. “This is as real as it gets.” He opened his car door and slid behind the wheel. “I’ll give you a call later. Sorry. I just need to process. I need some space, okay.” He cranked the engine and backed out before she got a word in.
“Yeah,” she said to his departing car. She’d rather have her aunt back than have her money and deal with a side of her cousin she’d never seen. “I wish she wasn’t dead either.”
Wilson slammed on the gas and zoomed down the street, weaving around slow cars and doing his best to get his cousin and that damn lawyer as far behind him as possible. Heat had made the car an instant sauna and sweat prickled from every pore. “A house,” he seethed softly in his old-model Ford. “No, Wilson,” he said, mocking his aunt’s voice. “‘A house worth a whole three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I remodeled, you know. That tacked on a good hundred thousand dollars to the place.’
“But you had to give Kim everything else, didn’t you, you old bag. You couldn’t even give Amanda her money for college. You fucking…” He swallowed back bile. “I know your secret,” he mocked. “You don’t know shit, Carolyn. You have no clue what you just did.
“Ten million dollars? Are you kidding me?” he seethed. All her accountant had said was that her investments were doing very well and she’d be set for a long time. But ten million dollars was over and above his wildest expectations. And she hadn’t given him a cent of it.