Chapter 20
TWENTY
I want you to know someone cares. Not me, but someone.
—Holly to Denver
HOLLY
I was in a room full of motorcycle men, and every one of them was looking at their president and me making assumptions.
They were, of course, making the correct assumptions. But assumptions they were making.
And I didn’t like being the center of attention like this.
But, alas, the men who were at that table were men that needed to be there.
In an hour, I would be walking into a courtroom to fight my mom on my dad’s life insurance.
My lawyer, a sexy looking man with sharp eyes and a jaw like granite, had gone over my case just yesterday and had some questions before he represented me in the courtroom this morning.
There were several others of Denver’s club in the room, but none of them interrupted or interjected as my lawyer lobbed questions at me one after the other.
“Does your mother come into town often?” Jedidiah asked.
I shrugged. “About twice a year, maybe. She’d show up in town, visit with Dad, then leave. I’m not sure what they visited about. But she always came to see him.”
“How long would she stay?” Jedidiah asked.
“A half a day, max. She’d fly in on a private jet, rent a car to get here. Visit with Dad. Drive right back to the airport,” I answered.
“And when did she leave for good?” he continued.
“When I was eleven,” I answered.
He wrote some more information down on his legal pad. “Did she pay child support?”
I snorted. “Absolutely not.”
“Do you know if your dad filed for child support to be paid?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck. “Dad was forced to when he was diagnosed with cancer. He couldn’t work sometimes, so he had to start doing what he could. One of those things was applying for child support. But she never paid. I heard them arguing about it on the phone a lot.”
He hummed as he wrote, his dark, deep voice slightly melodic.
“Denver, you said you bought most of his herd, right?”
“Right.” Denver leaned back in his seat.
“Did you happen to hear anything of what went on with them?” he asked. “Did her dad share anything with you? Were you aware of any debts?”
“A bit,” he admitted, looking at me apologetically. “They were drowning. When he left the land to me, he’d left me a sizable amount in unpaid property taxes. It was enough to cover three of the inheritances that Georgina is fighting over.”
I winced.
Denver squeezed my hand, because I was sure he thought I was still in the dark about what he’d done for me and my father.
I winked at him, and his eyes widened.
Denver turned back to Jedidiah, calm as ever, yet still holding my hand.
“He talked to me over the years about how bad it was. Didn’t exactly share all that he had to do, but on the outside looking in, I could see the change that took place in his operation.
He went from thousands of livestock to just enough that Holly could take care of.
All the horses and tack were sold at an auction that I went to. ”
I remembered that auction.
I’d cried the entire time silently in the back with my hoodie pulled up over my head.
But not nearly as bad as when Harry Trotter was sold to help pay for medical bills.
“After the fire, though, there was a lot of issues.”
“Fire?” Jedidiah asked.
I snorted. “One of my mother’s fancy lamps that she left behind caught fire in the barn’s office. Burned the whole back wing of the house along with the entire barn.”
“And the insurance for that?”
I was shaking my head. “We didn’t get any. Dad thought we had some, but no check ever came.”
Denver’s head turned my way, and Jedidiah’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, really?”
I nodded. “It was really bad. That was also the same year that Dad got diagnosed. Almost directly after the fire.”
Jedidiah continued to ask questions and take notes until someone tapped on the door and said, “It’s time to leave, sir.”
“Thanks, Anna.” Jedidiah sighed. “Let’s go. I think we’ve got this in the bag…but don’t freak out if you think it’s not going your way at first. I have a plan.”
Denver pulled me to him and walked with his arm around my hip, but he did take the time to say, “Boone told you, didn’t he?”
I snorted. “That’s something that you should’ve told me. I wouldn’t have been so mad at you.”
“He asked me not to,” he admitted as he gave my hips a squeeze.
I sighed. “My dad treated me like a child until he died. But I haven’t been a child in a very long time. I had to grow up way too quickly, and he shouldn’t have taken that away from me. I would’ve understood.”
The walk from Hopps, which was where we were having our meeting, to the courthouse was all of three hundred feet.
We turned the corner and crossed the street, and we were there.
Denver walked through the metal detector and set it off, but the guard waved him through.
Jedidiah did the same but didn’t slow down to show he’d heard it go off.
I, however, was the only one who didn’t set it off.
Then we were moving again, heading for the single courtroom that Jesper County had to offer.
And even better, it was shared between three towns that also had to utilize it.
It’d likely been getting a lot of use lately with all the arrests made with the dog fighting ring, my case, and Denver’s case that was coming up tomorrow for a custody hearing.
The doors were open, and the judge was already sitting, going through his notes.
My mom was, however, late.
Her lawyer sat there tapping at her desk with a pen and did a double-take when she saw me.
Yes, I knew I looked just like my mother.
Which was so very unfortunate.
The judge looked up, noted my mother still missing as we took our seats, and sat back in his chair.
“Mrs. Montgomery, where is your client?”
Mrs. Montgomery bit her lip. “On her way, sir. She’s running late. Traffic.”
Denver snorted.
She was full of shit.
There was never any traffic in our small town unless they had a parade or shut down the streets for Summerfest. Which was actually in a week, but the roads weren’t affected yet.
The doors were slammed open moments later, and I heard my mother’s telltale “click-click” of her heels racing toward us.
I remembered when I was younger hearing that sound.
It always meant I was about to get the fire beat out of me for some imaginary slight I’d inadvertently caused her.
She walked right past us, waved at the judge, and did a fucking curtsy.
The judge didn’t seem impressed, thank God.
My mother’s lawyer hissed under her breath at her, and she sat.
“Sorry I’m late, sir,” my mother cooed. “Traffic was a beast.”
The judge didn’t say anything, just leaned forward in his chair and said, “Let’s get started. Mrs. Montgomery. You first.”
“My client has shared an alternate will that she thinks should be counted over the one that was redone just last year,” the lawyer said.
“This is the will that’s been updated every year since her and her husband were married.
It’s always been stated that anything comes to her after Mr. Cain’s passing. ”
“Was this will filed with a lawyer?” the judge asked.
“It was resigned yearly with a lawyer outside of Hollywood, yes,” Mrs. Montgomery said.
“What was the date of the filing for the last will you’re aware of?”
Mrs. Montgomery read off the date.
“The new will that you have on file, Jedidiah?” the judge asked.
“It’s dated one month after that one,” Jedidiah answered.
“And was there any cause to think that Mr. Cain wasn’t in his right mind at the time of the filing of this new will?” the judge continued.
“No, sir, Your Honor,” Jedidiah answered. “I spoke with his lawyer, and he’s given a sworn statement that he was of sound mind and body at the time.”
“And would a man of sound mind and body just go and kill himself?” my mother asked.
My head whipped around as shock, anger and defiance powered through me.
She was an asshole, of course. But acting like the man had killed himself while under oath? That was a new low.
“From the records we have, ma’am,” Jedidiah drawled, “he was killed in a home invasion.”
Denver had tensed so completely next to me that I was now worried.
He was absolutely rigid.
“And what makes you say that he killed himself, Mrs. Cain?” the judge asked the question that was practically burning on the tip of my tongue. “And let me clarify, you were married to Cantrell Cain at the time of his death, correct?”
Another touchy subject.
Mom had fought Dad tooth and nail through the years as he’d tried to obtain a divorce.
In the end, Dad was too sick to keep trying.
That, and too poor.
Mom had thought it would look bad for her career if she had a divorce under her belt, so she’d stayed married. Despite Dad fighting not to be.
“Yes, Your Honor. Which was why I know why he killed himself. We talked quite a bit on the phone in the end. He called and told me he was going to do it. And that I needed to watch out for our daughter.” She snorted. “As if I haven’t been doing that.”
The absolute nerve on this woman.
Her scoff had my eyes narrowing.
Jedidiah leaned back in his chair and said, “But have you?”
My mother turned to look at him. “What do you mean, have I?”
“From what I was able to collect,” he said, “you have over a million and a half dollars that you owe in back child support.”
My mother’s face went pink. “That’s a lie.”
Actually, it wasn’t.
Every once in a while after she left, Mom would get a good-paying job, and the state would take some money out of her paycheck in back child support. But most of the time, she didn’t have a job that they could do that with.
Which was why she wasn’t more behind than she was.
“Not a lie,” Jedidiah disagreed. “My assistant was able to confirm it with the state. You owe, and I quote, one million, five hundred thousand, four hundred and twenty-two dollars and sixty-nine cents.” He looked at the judge. “She hasn’t paid any child support since my client was eleven.”
The judge looked over to my mother. “Is that true?”
My mother opened and closed her mouth like a gasping fish.
“I didn’t know!”