Seven Bundle

by Various Orca

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  15 14 13 12 • 4 3 2 1

  A story for Jake, Darcy and Ebony.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE

  “I don’t see why I have to go,” I said. I spoke quietly, forcing my voice to be calm and trying not to upset my mother. “The funeral, yes. I went to that so that the whole family could be together, but this is just some lawyer reading the will. There’s not going to be anything in it that affects me. I can’t see why they couldn’t just send the will out or email it.”

  The whole idea struck me as so old-fashioned—everyone gathered in a dusty room like in the climax of one of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries. Not that I didn’t enjoy mysteries. In fact I loved them, from the Encyclopedia Brown and Hardy Boys books when I was a kid to the more complex stories I read now by Ian Rankin and Robert Wilson. Trouble was, this sounded like it was going to be less of a mystery and more of a really boring afternoon.

  Actually, I wasn’t as dead set against going to the will reading as I must have sounded to Mom. It was just that I had spent the days after my grandfather’s death ignoring what I wanted to do and doing what everyone else wanted. I felt totally overwhelmed. It was like I was drowning in this tsunami of raw emotion, and I needed a break.

  I didn’t dislike my grandfather, although as a little kid I had been scared of the gruff old man who had that old-person smell. I simply didn’t share everyone else’s hero worship of him. Oh, he was nice enough, always gave us good gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, tried to attend our school plays and sports events. He had done interesting things, like being a pilot in the war and all, but lots of people did stuff like that. I suppose the problem was not with Grandfather but with the way other people built him up out of all proportion.

  My brother DJ, for example. At the funeral, he had stood up and made a long tearful speech about how wonderful Grandfather was and all the incredible things he had done in his life. As if DJ knew what the old guy had done decades before he was even born. I wanted my own life back, and I really couldn’t see the point of going to the will reading.

  The problem was that I was being rational and reasonable, but Mom made it personal. “Steven, I know Dad and you didn’t see eye to eye, but I’d like you to come along, for me.”

  I knew then that I’d lost the argument. For a start, my name’s Steve. Every time Mom calls me Steven, I feel like I’m five years old again. And playing the “do it for me” card was the clincher. Mom had been an emotional wreck these past few days. She was continually red-eyed, and I had heard her walking around the house in the middle of the night—a sure sign that she was upset and couldn’t sleep. How was I supposed to turn her down?

  “Okay,” I said, swallowing the urge to argue. “I’ll come, for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I wish you had got to know him better. He really was an extraordinary man.”

  “I’ve got to go, Mom,” I said hurriedly, before she launched into another recitation of all the wonderful things my grandfather had done. “I really need to update my résumé if I’m going to get a job that pays enough for me to go to Europe this summer.” I thought but didn’t say, And lets me get away from the family for a few weeks.

  “All right, dear,” Mom said, leaning over and kissing me on the forehead. I disappeared upstairs as fast as my legs could carry me.

  For ten minutes, I stared at my résumé on the computer screen. It didn’t belong to someone on the fast track for a Nobel Prize or a career as the CEO of IBM. A summer working at McDonald’s last year, a couple of years getting up at the crack of dawn for a paper route, a few weeks here and there stacking boxes at the local grocery store and, if I stretched back far enough, playing Lego and video games with the kid down the road while his parents escaped to a movie. All for minimum wage.

  I had $932.78 saved. Almost enough for the airfare to Europe if I was lucky, but I was going to get awfully bored if I couldn’t afford to leave London airport and really hungry if I didn’t eat for three or four weeks. I needed a high-paying job and I needed it fast; otherwise, my dream of traveling in Europe was looking more and more like a lost cause, at least for this year.

  I think the obvious impossibility of what I was trying to do was the only reason Mom wasn’t freaking out about my plan to go to Europe on my own at age seventeen. “Next year will be here before you know it,” she said. “Save up this summer. We can still have a break, up at Dad’s cabin on the lake for a week or two.” Her voice caught when she said this, but she recovered. “You and DJ and I can have a nice family holiday.”

  Even with a suitcase full of mystery novels and my laptop, the thought of two weeks trapped in a cabin with Mom and my twin brother DJ as an alternative to seeing Europe sent shivers down my spine. But what choice did I have? Short of winning the lottery, which would be tough since I wasn’t even old enough to buy a ticket, it looked like this year’s holiday would be spent being fussed over by Mom, arguing with DJ and swatting mosquitoes on the shores of Lake Moose Droppings.

  With his usual impeccable timing, DJ, my alwaysright, football-playing jock of a twin brother, knocked on my door and, without waiting for a reply, barged in. “Hi, little brother,” he said cheerfully. DJ was born fifteen minutes before me. Now, this is hardly grounds for him being my big brother, but I’ve been his little brother as long as I can remember. Add to that his relentless optimism and belief that everything is simple and will work out for the best, and my nerves frequently stretch past breaking point.

  “What, bro?” I asked. I call him bro because he once asked me not to. I figured it annoyed him, although he showed no sign that it did. But there was no way I was going to call him big brother.

  “Mom says you don’t want to come to the will reading,” he said, completely ignoring the exasperation in my voice and my attempt to aggravate him. He plopped himself down on the edge of my bed. “I’m glad you changed your mind. The family needs to be together at a time like this. Everyone should go to the will reading to show respect to Grandpa.”

  I resisted the temptation to point out that Grandfather was past caring who went to the reading of his will, and said instead, “We all went to the funeral, the whole family and dozens of friends. That showed respect. This is just a lawyer’s thing. The will was probably written years ago anyway.”

  “Some of Grandpa’s money will come to Mom and that’ll help.” DJ’s voice was taking on the preachy tone he used when he was explaining something that he thought I was too dense to understand. “She’s been working long hours to keep this family together, and she’s very stressed. It’s been really hard for her with Dad dying when we were both so young.”

  “I know that,” I said, my voice rising despite my attempt to keep it under control. “I’m not stupid.”

  DJ looked at me with that half-smile of his that seemed to say, It’s all right. When you’re as old and smart as I am, you’ll understand. “You could help out more around the house.” DJ scanned my room. “Clean up this pit for a start. I bet there’s a whole ecosystem evolving under that pile of soccer stuff in the corner.”

  “My room is my space,” I said, swallowing hard. “Mom agreed we were in charge of our own space, and just because you want to live in a compulsively tidy, antiseptic cell, doesn’t mean everyone else has to.”

  DJ nodded infuriatingly and changed the subject before I could get any angrier. “You still planning on Europe this summer?”

  It took me a moment to adjust to the new topic. “Yeah, if I can
get enough money together.”

  “You think traveling alone’s such a good idea?”

  Here we go again, I thought. A gentle reminder from my older and wiser brother that I might be about to make a mistake. “I can handle it, bro,” I said. “Besides, I might not be alone. Sam has relatives over there, and he might be visiting them this summer. We’ve talked about hanging out together.”

  “Is Sam the nerdy English kid with the curly hair who spends his time building model planes?”

  “So what?” I said, challenging DJ to criticize some more, but he simply shrugged. “What are you planning to do this summer that’s so hot?”

  “I don’t know,” DJ said. “Work, put some money aside for college. Mom’s talking about going up to Grandpa’s cabin. That’ll be a good time.”

  “Yippee,” I said with as much sarcasm in my voice as I could muster. “Look, if I’m going to Europe, I need to get a job, so I have to get my résumé in order.” I turned back to my computer screen.

  DJ stood and took a couple of steps toward the door. Then he stopped, turned and said, “I’d come with you to Europe, you know. If I could.” Then he was gone.

  I sat back and stared at the ceiling. That was typical of DJ. Assuming I couldn’t manage on my own. Trying to “big brother” me. It got on my nerves. On the other hand, I appreciated that he would do whatever he could to make my dream possible. His superior attitude bugged me like crazy, but we were twins. Deep down, we both knew that if the other got in trouble, we would do whatever it took to help.

  Why did life have to be so complicated? I sighed and looked back at my computer screen. The more immediate question was, how was I going to make flipping burgers for three months seem like the perfect qualification for a twenty-buck-an-hour job?

  TWO

  “Good afternoon,” the lawyer said as he settled himself behind the largest desk I had ever seen. The eleven other people in the room mumbled a response. I remained silent.

  The room was big, but it still felt stuffy with so many people in it. The walls were paneled in dark wood, and the one behind the desk was a solid mass of glass-fronted bookcases filled with regimented rows of identical legal books. It looked as if the place had been arranged by DJ at his most compulsively neat.

  The six adults—Mom, her three sisters and two of my uncles—sat on a huge, overstuffed leather couch and a loveseat in front of the lawyer’s desk. DJ and two of my cousins, Spencer and Webb, sat in three similar armchairs. My other cousins, Bunny and Adam, perched on the wide arms of one of the chairs. I stood at the back. Before the lawyer came in, Mom had looked up at me and patted the arm of the sofa beside her, but I had shaken my head. I was here, but I didn’t have to be part of the proceedings. A shiny black, flat-screen TV sat in a cabinet to one side as if it was watching us all.

  The lawyer was talking, thanking us for coming, making some minor asides to put us at ease and saying what a wonderful man Grandfather had been, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking I could probably live comfortably for a week in Europe on what the lawyer’s suit cost.

  Now he was going on about selling assets and splitting the money between Mom and her sisters. That was good. Mom deserved a break. The cottage was to be kept and shared among us all. Great, I thought, that really is where I’m going to spend the summer. Then he said something that caught my attention.

  “This is without a doubt one of the most unusual clauses that I have ever been asked to put in a will.”

  I wasn’t the only one interested. The lawyer was slowly scanning the room, and everyone was staring back at him like mice mesmerized by a snake.

  “I know you are all anxious to hear about these undertakings,” the lawyer continued. “However, I cannot share them with all of you.” A burst of protest came from several relatives, but he raised his hands. “Please, please! You will all be fully informed, but not all of you will be informed at the same time. Some people will have to leave the room prior to the undertakings being read.”

  “Wonderful,” I murmured under my breath. “All the fuss about coming, and I’m going to be sent out with the other kids.”

  “Therefore,” the lawyer went on, “as per the terms of the will, I request that the grandsons—”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I blurted out. Everyone turned to stare at me. I hadn’t meant to say anything out loud, it just kind of escaped. Since I had been forced to come here, I wanted to stay for the only bit that promised to be remotely interesting. “I don’t want to be kicked out of the room,” I concluded weakly.

  “You’ll go if you’re told to go.” Trust DJ to butt in. He probably felt I was embarrassing the family. Same old, same old.

  “You don’t understand.” The lawyer looked at DJ. “He can stay.”

  “If he’s staying, then I’m staying as well,” DJ said.

  “Me too,” Webb pitched in, and a babble of voices erupted around the room.

  The lawyer stood up. “Could everybody please just stop,” he said in a voice that any of my teachers would have been proud of. “Please, I am reading a will. Decorum is needed. Out of respect for the deceased, you all need to follow his directions. Is that understood?”

  Everyone fell silent. “Sorry,” DJ said.

  “Me too,” I added sheepishly.

  “Before I go on, I need to ask everybody”—he looked hard across the room at me—“to agree to respect the terms of his will—all the terms of his will.”

  I nodded; so did everyone else. “Of course we agree,” my mother said.

  “Excellent.” The lawyer sat back down. “Now, I need everyone except the six grandsons to leave the room.”

  Now it was the adults’ turn to blurt out objections.

  “What?” Charlotte, Webb’s mother, asked.

  “Did you say all the adults have to leave?” Aunt Debbie added.

  “Yes.” The lawyer nodded. “Everyone except the grandsons.”

  A broad grin spread across my face as the adults filed out in confusion. I had been dumb to blurt out my complaint based on a wrong assumption, but my aunts and uncles had been no better. They had stayed quiet only because they had made the same assumption as me. When that turned out to be wrong, they had blurted out their complaints just as I had.

  My mother was the last adult to leave the room. As she left, she smiled back at DJ and closed the door. My cousins spread out into the vacant seats. I stayed standing at the back.

  “Well, gentlemen,” the lawyer said, clasping his hands beneath his chin. “I am assuming that nobody saw this coming.”

  “Grandpa was always full of surprises,” Bunny said.

  “So,” I said, feeling more comfortable now that the adults had left, “I guess because of that we’re not that surprised.”

  “Interesting perspective,” the lawyer said. “The only way you would have been surprised is if he didn’t do something to surprise you.”

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “So if he’d done nothing then you would have actually been surprised, which wouldn’t have been a surprise. Sort of a Catch-22, don’t you think?”

  “Do you think, sir, that we could go on?” DJ said. I flashed him a vicious glare for being so pompous, but he ignored me. “I believe we’re all anxious to hear what you’re going to tell us.”

  “I’m sure you are,” the lawyer said. “But, actually, I’m not going to tell you anything. Your grandfather is.”

  Everyone tensed at that, and I caught DJ glancing toward the door as if he expected Grandfather to walk through it.

  “I’m going to play a video your grandfather made.” The lawyer picked up a remote and pointed it at the shiny black TV. “I was in the room when your grandfather recorded this.” He pressed a button and the TV flickered into life. “I think all of you will be at least a little surprised by what he has to say.” He pressed a second button, and Grandfather appeared on the screen.

  I watched, enthralled. We all did. I know I had never felt particularly close
to Grandfather, but it was weird seeing and hearing him almost from beyond the grave.

  “I’m not sure why I have to be wearing makeup,” he said to someone off camera. “This is my will, not some late-night talk show…and it’s certainly not a live taping.” The figure off camera laughed, and I found myself smiling. That was the sort of black humor I enjoyed.

  “Good morning…or afternoon, boys,” he began, turning to face the camera and us. “If you’re watching this, I must be dead, although on this fine afternoon I feel very much alive.” Grandfather looked exactly as I remembered him, wearing his trademark black beret and the sweater I remembered Mom knitting him a couple of winters ago.

  “I want to start off by saying that I don’t want you to be sad. I had a good life and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. That said, I still hope that you are at least a little sad and that you miss having me around. After all, I was one spectacular grandpa!”

  A chuckle rose from the group, and I had to admit that I did miss him, now that I could only see him on TV.

  “And you were simply the best grandsons a man could ever have. I want you to know that of all the joys in my life, you were among my greatest. From the first time I met each of you to the last moments I spent with you”—Grandfather smiled slightly—“and of course I don’t know what those last moments were, but I know they were wonderful, I want to thank you all for being part of my life. A very big, special, wonderful, warm part of my life.”

  It was soppy and sentimental. I knew that, but it didn’t stop a tear forming in the corner of my eye as I watched the old man reach forward and take a sip of water from the glass on the desk in front of him. His hand shook ever so slightly. Was he nervous? He never struck me as someone who felt fear.

  “I wanted to record this rather than have my lawyer read it out to you.” A smile turned the corners of my grandfather’s lips up. “Hello, Johnnie.”

  “Hello, Davie,” the lawyer replied with a matching smile.

  Grandfather glanced off screen. “I hope you appreciate that twenty-year-old bottle of Scotch I left you. And you better not have had more than one snort of it before the reading of my will.” He looked back at us and winked.