Chapter 5
Jude
W ith literally nowhere to go and no other options I could see, I dug up a number for my mother’s brother and asked if Eleanor and I could stay with him for a couple of weeks until I could make some solid plans.
“My lil’ sis’s girls, eh.” There was a peculiar note in his voice. “And where is she?”
“We don’t know. She just disappeared.”
“Huh. How old are you two now?”
“Eleanor is about to turn sixteen. I’m twenty-one, so I’ll be looking for a job. I promise we won’t take up much space for long.”
“Can you do dishes? Cook?”
I had never washed a dish or cooked a meal in my life.
“Absolutely.”
“Fine. I have a spare room you can have.”
We left the hotel as directed, within the hour, and went immediately to Jerry’s office.
He paced the sleek, carpeted floor of his 37 th floor office after pulling the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling window that divided it from the rest of the building.
“Where are you going to go?” he hissed, pulling out another of his ubiquitous handkerchiefs. “And why did you come here?”
We watched him move back and forth in front of us. “Because you have control of our trusts, Jerry,” I said. “I’m going to have to stay in touch with you, obviously.” I shifted in the leather chair, chewing on my lip. “I wanted to know what we’re legally able to access now, actually.”
He finally stopped and stared. “Nothing. You can’t have any of it until this business with your father is settled?—”
“There has to be something. Our trusts were part of our maternal grandparents’ estates. They have nothing to do with our father and as such should be untouchable by any of this, right?”
He rubbed at the line between his eyes, suddenly weary looking. “Maybe. Let me check…”
Sitting down at his desk, he slipped on a pair of reading glasses and began tapping away at his keyboard, occasionally murmuring to himself. “Okay, here we are…let me just read through this…”
I waited impatiently while he read for a seeming eternity. Eleanor’s hand crept onto my knee, and I looked down, realizing I was jiggling it up and down with a frenetic energy. “You’re shaking the whole floor,” she whispered with a smile.
“Okay.” Jerry pulled his glasses off and focused on us. “The trusts are supposed to be released in increments when you’re twenty-five, thirty-three, and forty years of age.”
“But…” Twenty-five was still several years away. I couldn’t wait that long. Eleanor couldn’t wait that long.
“However,” he continued. “I think I may be able to get some kind of dispensation for the first portion of it, given your unique situation. If we can cite emancipation or prove parental death, negligence, or abandonment, we may be able to cite necessity.”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Whatever we need to do; just please get the necessary paperwork started. All of our assets are frozen, Jerry. We’re on our way to Virginia to stay with an uncle, but that is a temporary situation.
Please—” I stretched a hand across his desk, flattening it in front of him.
He looked from the computer screen to my face.
For the first time since this entire mess had started, I felt like I had his full attention.
“Please help us.”
He nodded; his mouth set in a tight line. “You have my number. Stay in touch, and I’ll provide you with updates. It won’t be an overnight process, but I’ll get it done.” He rose, and we followed suit. “You girls be careful.”
A week later Eleanor and I were reluctantly ensconced in the spare bedroom of our uncle’s trailer in Virginia.
We had to pay hell to get here, the temporary custody situation I had in New York not transferring to another state.
Social services working between New York and Virginia gave temporary custody of Eleanor to my uncle, which baffled me until the Virginia case worker cited the fact that I was jobless.
“Get a job with a steady check, and secure a stable home environment, and we’ll revisit the custody arrangement,” she said, looking with some distaste at my uncle’s trailer.
I had the sense she wasn’t impressed with the scent of weed that permeated the furniture, the dishes piled around the kitchen, or the mysterious stain on the far wall.
I vowed to do as she said as quickly as possible and get Eleanor and me both in a better place.
My uncle lived in a tiny town called Cold Spring, aka Bumfuck Egypt.
I spent the first week settling in—getting Eleanor enrolled in the local high school, scouting area real estate for something inexpensive I could apply the tiny portion of my trust that would be released to me in thirty days, and applying to practically every college in the state.
The chances of acceptance plus a scholarship at this late date were slim to none, but I sent the applications in regardless, knowing they were my likeliest route to the well-paying job I would need to take custody of Eleanor.
And then I waited.
I took a job at a fast-food restaurant to pass the hours during the day, washed my uncle’s dishes, and watched him grimly in the evenings.
He was a perv. He never did anything, but his eyes tracked my sister with greedy intent when he thought I wasn’t looking. At night, we slept with a chair wedged beneath the doorknob of the bedroom door.
And then I found the farmhouse.
I discovered it by accident one afternoon, as I was jogging down a different route from my usual one. The two-lane road quickly turned into one-lane, bisecting fields on either side and the occasional smattering of farm buildings and homes.
I ran by a For Sale sign, glanced briefly to the side, and ran on. Then I stopped, turned in a circle, and ran back.
The house was barely visible from the road, just a worn red metal roof barely visible from the bottom of a long drive. I hovered, jogging in place, undecided whether to go down the driveway for a better look.
The crunch of tires on asphalt jarred me into jumping over to the side.
A pale blue Chevy pulled alongside me, an ancient man at the wheel. He leaned out the window, peering at me with shrewd eyes the same color as his vehicle. “Hey, there, gal.”
“Hi,” I returned. “I was just looking at this house. Do you happen to know who owns it?”
“I do,” he answered, smiling. “That would be my house.” He stuck a wrinkled hand toward me. “Tom Chester.”
Two first names. I’d always liked people with two last or two first names. They were unique. I wiped my palm on my shorts and shook his. “I’m Jude. Jude Tiernay. Would it be okay if I walked down the driveway and took a look at it?”
“Sure, sure. Hop in, and I’ll take you through it real quick.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to keep you from anything.”
“Not doing a thing.”
Excitement stirred in my belly. I walked around and climbed into the passenger seat, careful to avoid the cracked vinyl against my thighs, and Tom drove us down the drive to his house.
It was small, with a sagging porch, and a roof that needed repair, and a door that hung crookedly on its hinges.
Everything about it was weathered to a dull gray, including the bushes out front that collected dust from the long gravel driveway.
The windows were coated with a thick layer of grime, and everything about it screamed “you’re crazy! Run!”
And yet, everything about it also screamed home .
Inside, there were narrow planks of heart pine flooring beneath years of dirt.
The sink was one of those old-fashioned apron kinds I saw on the fixer-upper shows all the time, with a ceramic drainboard.
It had been neglected, but it was nothing a little attention wouldn’t take care of.
The doorknobs were clear crystal, the ceilings nine-foot, and there was a fireplace in the front living room, flanked by dusty built-in bookcases.
“Does the fireplace work?” I asked Mister Chester, running a finger along the mantel.
“Sure does. I’d make sure the chimney’s clean before you go lighting a fire, though.”
I nodded, my gaze tracking around the room, lighting on small details. “How much are you asking?”
“Well…” He peered at me intently in the gathering dusk and rubbed a fingertip along the side of his mouth. “That depends on you. You see all that land out there?” He swept a hand in the general direction of the window, and I looked through the grime to see acres on acres of field.
“I see it.”
“I have close to five hundred acres.”
“Wow.”
“I want to sell some of it with this house.”
Despair, immediate and crushing, settled over my earlier excitement. I couldn’t afford any land. “Oh. I don’t need any land. I just needed a place?—”
“Well, now, I thought that might be the case. Let’s do some thinking here.
” His look measured me, and I tried to keep from fidgeting.
“Why don’t we do this. I’ll sell you the house and two acres, with the proviso that you purchase twenty-five additional acres over the next ten years.
You can do it on your own timetable, and we’ll lock your price in now, so if property values increase, you won’t be paying additional costs.
What do you say?” He named a price I could afford when Jerry finished my trust paperwork.
I shifted uneasily. “Why do you want to sell me twenty-five acres?”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Don’t you know that land is the most valuable thing you can own? Own a little land, and you’ll never be poor. Never want for nothing.”
At this point in my life, twenty-five acres was all but useless to me. But ten years from now…who knows. I was smart enough to recognize a good deal when one bit me in the ass, and this was a good deal.
I held my hand out.
“Mister Chester, you have a deal.” I looked around the farmhouse with satisfaction. “Thank you!”