I almost laugh — that was basically already Shelby’s anyway. She started working there shortly after I left, no matter how much I warned her away from it, and Lawrence would fill me in on her progress. I followed as she went from knowing nothing about building to basically running the show, as the crew started looking up to her and listening to her despite the fact that she was twenty years their junior.
Leave it to our dad togiveher something she’d already worked for and earned.
“Jake,” Shelby says, “it doesn’t matter what Dad left me. I’m calling you because the house is in your name, which means I can’t deal with it. I can’t list it, which we won’t be able to do?—”
“Well, you can have it,” I say, the words snapping out of me. “Whatever we need to do to transfer ownership. I’ll sell it to you for a dollar, whatever.”
It’s fucking rich, him leaving the house to me when the last time I was there, he put all my shit out on the curb, basically a loud and proud sign that he wanted me to get the fuck out.
“That’s not how it works,” Shelby says, and the construction sounds around her disappear. I hear the dinging of a vehicle, then thewhooshof air conditioning. “Besides, you know that I started flipping, right?”
“I know that you were thinking about getting into flipping.”
When was the last time we talked? I try to remember. Months ago… long before the Stanley Cup? Did I invite her to come watch it?
“Well, I’m into it now. Just bought my first property. Got it for a contractor’s price. But I have a pretty tight window for this budget, and we have to get as much done as we can in the upcoming weeks.”
I’m quiet, waiting for what this has to do with me. I’m proud of her for doing it, but I don’t see why she wouldn’t want the house. If anything, she could take it for another flip.
“Which means I don’t have any time to go through the house, Jake. I need you to come back and clean it out. If you want to sell it for any kind of good money, there are a lot of repairs that need to be made.”
My stomach starts to churn at the thought of it — returning to town, going back into that house. Doing work on it when I’d much rather demolish the entire thing.
“Can’t we sell it as is?”
“Jake.” Shelby pauses, and I hear the sharp sound of her sucking in breath, breathing deeply to deal with my attitude. I’m sympathetic to her but also don’t want anything to do with this, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. “I still have some stuff in there. You have things in the attic. There are… there are some things that belonged to Mom in the storage room, as well.”
I bite my tongue, hating it. Hating that Shelby knew that would change my mind.
Shelby wasn’t old enough to really know our mother. But I was, just, and when I was a kid, her memory flitted through that house like a ghost, a whisper of an explanation for why things had gotten so bad with my father.
“Fine.” I grind out. My agent will be happy. She’d given me an entire spiel about laying low this summer, staying out of the spotlight, getting out of the city. Letting the story about me die down.
“Go crazy,” Abbie had said, waving her arms. “Maybe even think about doing some volunteer work, huh, Bradson?”
“Fine?” Shelby asks, sounding dubious, like she doesn’t quite believe that I would agree to this. I can’t really believe it, either.
“Yes, fine. I’ll fly out.”
When I get off the phone with her, I stare down at the black, reflective screen, thinking about the money in my bank account, the signing bonus I got with the Kings. Maybe I could paysomeone to go into the house, pack everything up and throw it in a storage unit for Shelby to go through another time.
I could use my money to get out of having to deal with this. If I really wanted to, I could avoid ever going back to Wildfern Ridge for the rest of my life.
Then, as so often happens, an image of Lara flashes into my mind.
A whole series of memories, starting with that first night in the tree house and ending with that night on her balcony. A reminder that the town and my dad aren’t the only reasons I don’t want to go back to Wildfern Ridge.
Then, like I always do, I force them out. Refuse to think about it. I can’t look back at the past; I have to keep trudging forward.
Even as I pack a bag to go back to the town I never wanted to see again.
CHAPTER 13
LARA
“Come on, come on,” I mutter, desperately trying to rotate my scrub top around my body after realizing I threw it on backwards. Yesterday was clinicals and class, and now I’m starting my stretch of three workdays in a row, seven in the morning to seven in the evening.
Before dartingout of the locker room for my shift in the emergency department, I take one last look at my phone, finding a text from my mom.
