Chapter 1
Chapter One
ERIKA
“He left me what?” I choked, lungs flattening like I’d taken a punch I never saw coming.
“Now, don’t panic, Erika.” Tom Perkins stared at me over the top of his reading glasses. They hid some of the deep lines around his eyes, but not the barely contained good-old-boy attitude that came from being one of the three senior lawyers in this rural North Carolina town.
My lungs forced me to cough. A soft paw batted at my leg. I touched Tracker’s gray-flecked head, more to soothe him than me. My cattle dog was an empathetic creature clued in to my moods.
“I’m not panicking.” My voice sounded squeakier than normal.
Perhaps, I was freaking out a bit, which wasn’t normal for me.
As an emergency veterinarian, I could handle staggering pet traumas that involved a lot of blood without losing it.
Clients raging in my face or experiencing a mental breakdown over their pet’s condition were no problem. But this?
I swallowed hard before speaking. “My dad and stepmom, whom I haven’t seen in a decade, are dead.
As in gone, gone. You’re telling me I’m in charge of their three-year-old?
” I gripped my hands together as if doing so might ground me in a world gone mad.
“And…” I sucked in air. “My dad left behind a debt as high as my mortgage that I have to pay?”
“Vinny is eight, really almost nine,” Tom said. “He has no other relatives from your father's side and none from your stepmother’s.”
“None? There’s truly no one else?” I curled my fingers into the chair’s arms until they ached.
Tracker shuffled around and plopped down on my toes.
He wasn’t technically a “service dog,” despite what I told the receptionist, but he was close enough.
There was no way I could leave him shivering in the car.
“The will clearly states his guardianship goes to you.”
“Me?” I let out a breath that felt too big for my chest. “I work overnight shifts in Pennsylvania. That’s a day away from here.
Who’s going to sit up with him if he has a bad dream?
Who’s there when I’m at work?” I shook my head slowly.
“Kids cost a lot. Childcare, food… And the schools where I live—” I swallowed.
“I can barely keep my own life afloat. I don’t know how to do this without failing him. ”
“Let me see if Evelyn can get you a water.” Tom rose from his rosewood desk. Like a good lawyer of my dad's generation, his blue button-down shirt was pressed. His slacks looked freshly dry cleaned. Even his belt looked polished.
“I don’t need a water.” I wanted all of this to be a bad dream. Wake up. Wake up!
“Are you sure? We have more details to go over.” He paused rounding his desk. “If you feel this is too much right now, we can review the rest tomorrow.”
The condescending tone shot a bolt of oh-hell-no up my spine. I gritted out, “What else is there?”
Tom’s chair groaned when his bulk eased into his seat. “The house goes to Vinny.”
“He's five. What is he supposed to do with a house?”
“He's eight. Eight.”
“Got it. He’s eight. How does that work? Who pays for all the things that go with a house like electricity and insurance? I bet their house is on a water pump and a septic system. Who pays for repairs? What about taxes?”
“That’s the responsibility of his guardian, which is now you. Your father didn’t have a lot in savings and even less in retirement.”
“What about life insurance? Dad had to have had that.”
Tom shook his head. “Now, Erika, we both know he wasn’t expecting to die like this. He did own the house outright.”
“You’re saying he left me nothing to pay for all this.”
“What money remains will be held in a trust for Vinny since it only amounts to a total of twelve thousand after fees and funeral expenses.” He glared over the top of his glasses again as if expecting me to lose it.
The look added extra drama to his presentation, which is what this was.
“As financial executor for your father’s estate, I will decide how to appropriate those funds.
I think they need to remain in holding for Vinny’s schooling.
We can start a savings account for college. ”
“Is he required to stay in Vision?”
“That’s not specified.” Tom removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“Can I sell the house?”
“If you do, the proceeds will go into the trust for Vinny.”
That was doable. At least I wasn't obligated to stay in the outdated farmhouse that sat on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere. I had no loyalty to the house. Dad purchased it after I left for college to take care of his new family, which he made clear didn’t include me.
“That’s a fine piece of land your father owned. You might want to hold onto it. There are a few more things. There’s the matter of the veterinary clinic your father partially owned.”
“What do you mean partially owned?” He started the clinic in Vision twenty-something years ago and had worked full-time ever since.
Out here, somewhere between North Carolina's coast and the mountains, there was nothing but farmland and people trying to avoid poverty. I’d spent over half my life wishing to escape this town where everyone knew everyone else’s business.
In Vision, the expectation was you attended either the Methodist or Baptist church on Sunday unless you were dying.
You always bought your pumpkins and flowers at Finn’s Feed store.
You brought a kickass home-baked item to both the spring and fall festivals in the park to be sold for charity, which was usually the local animal shelter or Mrs. Gibson’s Youth Leadership group out of the Baptist church.
There was a lot of controversy over whether the place to grocery shop was the Piggly Wiggly or Food Lion, and that was not a discussion to start when at the only gas station in town which doubled as a diner.
That place served as a social hangout for those out of work, not at work, or generally bored during the day.
Before our bitter war, everyone thought Josh Hurst would pop the marriage question to me right after high school.
No one asked me if I wanted to get married so young.
It was assumed. We’d dated most of senior year until the Milly kiss incident.
Dad didn’t say anything to counter the town's expectations of an impending engagement, even after we broke up. And by “town’s expectations”, I meant the expectations of the senior congregation at the Baptist church, which included Josh's extended family.
What Dad's clients thought of him was far more important to him than my career plans or dreams. He hadn’t cared about my broken heart.
All I got from him was bitter criticism for kicking Josh out of my life.
Jerks, both of them.
Maybe Josh had moved away. Doubtful, but it sure would be nice. My humiliation of him on that championship game day had made me a legend here in Vision. It was best for both of us if we never crossed paths again.
Tom droned on about legal crap until I heard, “He sold half the clinic to Josh Hurst last year. That’s the debt I referred to earlier.”
I choked on...I don't even know what, maybe my own spit. “How could he sell his clinic to Josh?” I coughed several times, but it did nothing to soothe the burn from swallowing wrong the first time. “You have to be a veterinarian to own a clinic in this state, right?”
“Dr. Hurst is a veterinarian. He went local to State, unlike you, who went up north.”
What level of hell had I entered?
I resented the judgment in Tom’s tone. Virginia was hardly “up north,” but around here, going anywhere except North Carolina State was considered an offensive snub, especially for veterinary school.
“He’s a veterinarian?” I squeaked out. How had I not known this? The Josh I remembered sucked at school and had little interest in science. Something must have changed.
Why hadn't Dad said something?
Granted, we hadn’t spoken much since I left. I had tried. He hadn’t.
Dad treated my decision to attend college and vet school out of state as a personal betrayal, something he couldn’t quite forgive.
But I remained certain his bitterness had less to do with geography and everything to do with Josh and me ending things.
He’d always cared more about Josh than he did about me.
Obviously, if he had taken him on as a partner.
The leather creaked as Tom shifted in his chair.
“The ownership part is complicated. Your father sold all shares of the clinic to Josh a year ago to settle his debts and pay off his mortgage. They arranged for him to buy back his half over the next few years. Each year he was to pay a percentage of his salary toward buying back his part of the clinic. I guess he figured he could mentor Dr. Hurst and have a solid retirement plan.” He leaned forward and took a sip of water from a whiskey glass—at least I thought it was water.
“Since you showed no interest in returning home, he had to make plans.”
Dad never asked me to be the prodigal child, to take over the family business. He never spoke to me after I left for college unless I called him, usually once a year on Christmas. I gritted my teeth and spoke through them. “Why is this my problem?”
“He owes Josh several more years of payments.”
“That was an agreement between the two of them, not me.” During a Christmas call a few years ago, Dad had mentioned—almost offhand—that he’d hired some new grad from State. I couldn’t remember a single detail about this mystery vet, which I later realized was intentional.
Dad remarried when I started college. I never came back after the wedding.
Watching how fast he moved on after Mom died of cancer when I was still in high school had hurt enough.
What hurt more was how completely he’d moved on from me.
He never checked in. Not once. Not during undergrad, not through vet school.
No emails. No texts. Not even a postcard.