“Uh, Ms. Kent, no offense.” How could he put this into words without coming across as ungrateful? “But… what do you mean ‘we’? You’re—you were—my dad’s lawyer. It’s not like we’re….” Friends? Yeah, obviously not, because Ty didn’t have any of those. At least not in this town.
Eliza was quiet for a moment, her dark eyes serious. Then she said, “It’s true that I was your daddy’s lawyer. But he’s dead, God rest him”—she said that the way Southern women saidbless your heart—“which means I’myourlawyer now. And while I can’t directly act against his legal will, he’s also not here to clarifyhowany of his wishes should be carried out, if it hasn’t been put down on paper. Do you understand me?”
The last of Ty’s two-day stupor evaporated, and he looked at her with clear eyes as his brain translated:Fuck your dad.Not something he’d ever expected to hear from her, even if it wasn’t in so many words. “I think so.” He paused. “Thanks.”
She waved this off. “You’re welcome. Now, that being said, your daddy paid my retainer for this year, but if you’re planning on getting arrested and I have to bail you out of jail, my rates are going up, you hear?”
And now she was… teasing him? This day kept getting weirder. Ty raised his hands. “Hey, I get you. I haven’t been arrested since the last time you had to bail me out. I promise. They don’t let you be a paramedic if you’ve got a criminal record, you know.” And his job was the one thing he had going for him. The sooner he got to go back to it for real, the better.
“Yes. About that.” She sighed, and in the sudden lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth, Ty detected that shehadactually aged in the ten-plus years since he’d last seen her. “I’ve been going over the policies your father had in place, but because of the nature of his death, the insurance payouts will be minimal.” Translation: nobody wanted to pay because Ty’s dad drove himself into a tree, possibly on purpose, when he had already lost his license. Ty was lucky Eliza hadn’t said anything yet about someone suing his estate. “There’s more than enough money in his accounts and in the house. The problem is with the will, probate, and home insurance.”
Of course it was. “That actually sounds more like three problems.”
With a shake of her head, she got up from her chair. “You always were smarter than your daddy gave you credit for.” She went to a sideboard, where there was a pitcher of ice water and two glasses, and poured one for each of them. Then she sat back down, this time on the opposite side of the desk.
“First problem.” She passed across a glass for him, along with a cork coaster. “The will. Your father has named you executor, which you already know. It’s a responsibility you can refuse, which I’ve also told you.”
Ty chugged the glass and wiped a droplet of water from the corner of his mouth. The pitcher was still half full; he eyed it hopefully. Dehydration was setting in. He should’ve packed himself a banana bag—an IV infusion of potassium would be great right about now. “Right,” he said. “And you said the executor takes, uh, 5 percent?”
“Typically that’s what they’re entitled to, although in this case you’re also the beneficiary of the majority of the property.”
Ty’s mouth fell open. “I’m sorry?” He’d been sure his dad would disinherit him.
“There’s five hundred thousand set aside for a donation to the Cancer Society.” Eliza reached for a tablet at the corner of her desk and thumbed it on. “As well as various endowments. But that leaves a substantial amount of assets, including the house.”
Ty stumbled to his feet and poured himself a second glass of water, which he brought back to the desk with him. “Uh. The Cobra?” Ty didn’t care about the house, but the Cobra had been his mother’s baby, a car she loved driving with her dad when she was a kid. She even taught Ty to drive stick in it.
Ty’s dad locked it up when she died.
Eliza cleared her throat. “Donated to an automotive museum.”
Ty’s heart broke. “Of course he did.” Why would he have thought otherwise?
“There’s more.” Eliza surged forward. “As I said, you can refuse to be executor. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of waiting, and you’ll be under some scrutiny. Probate takes a long time, sometimes more than a year. Nothing can happen with your father’s things until that process is complete.”
“What happens if I turn it down?”
“Well, normally the state would perform the service and take its percentage of the estate. However, your father included a clause that, if you refuse the duty of executor….”
Oh boy, Ty thought. Here it comes.
“A second will comes into effect, and the proceeds from the estate will be given to the Alliance Defending Freedom.”
Great. “Let’s take it as a given that I’m accepting the job of executor.” Ty didn’t care about the money. Well—okay, he could use the money. He only wanted to refuse it because it had been his father’s. But if the alternative to the drudgery of being executor was his dad’s riches going to an actual hate group, then no thanks. He’d find the time between shifts to figure out how to handle all this. Once he mentioned to any self-respecting accountant how much he stood to inherit, he’d have people lining up to get paid in a year. “What’s the next bad news?”
“The home insurance.” She shook her head. “A house like that, it costs a lot to insure. Currently, those payments are set to come out automatically, so you don’t have to worry about that. The more pressing issue is that under the current policy, the home has to remain occupied, or the policy will lapse.”
“Okay, well, that’s….” He shook his head. “I mean it can’t be that hard to find someone who wants to rent the place, right? I’ll put it on the market for like a thousand bucks a month and….”
Eliza was already shaking her head. “That would require changing the current insurance policy, which can’t be done until a whole host of other t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. It’ll take time. Time you don’t have.”
His stomach sank and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So you’re saying what, exactly?”
“The easiest way for you to solve this problem is to move in permanently, or at least until the estate clears probate and you can put the house up for sale.”
Fuck. Ty thought that was where this was going. He’d spent more than fifteen years furiously swimming away from this place, but he’d never escaped the chain around his ankle, and now the anchor was dragging him back down. “My job is in Chicago.”
The words sounded as flimsy as they felt.
