Chapter 5 Need To Move Forward
NEED TO MOVE FORWARD
“Hi, Matt,” Anya said to him the following Wednesday when she walked into his office.
It wasn’t exactly the call he’d been hoping to get from her, but he wasn’t going to complain at any opportunity to see her.
“How are you doing?” he asked. He led her into his office, then shut the door.
“I’ve been better.”
She wasn’t smiling, which concerned him.
Though when someone called up an attorney, it wasn’t usually a joyous occasion.
“Take a seat. You didn’t tell me much when you texted, other than you needed to talk on a legal matter. Are you in trouble?”
The thought that she might be in danger had his heart racing and feet itching to hit the pavement and defend her.
It was what he’d always wanted to do when he was younger. Too bad he hadn’t realized he should have protected her from himself.
“It’s not me,” she said. “It’s about my parents. Or for my parents. My mother is running late, but she should be here soon. She got held up with my father and getting him out of the house.”
“Is this about the embezzlement?” He’d read about it online a few weeks ago.
“That’s part of it. It’s horrible and still makes me so mad.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I’m going to assume the business is failing?”
“I can give you a rundown before they get here. It’s best if you know anyway.”
She was sitting in a chair across from him and leaned back to cross her legs in jeans. He’d taken his suit jacket off, no tie, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
He wasn’t as formal when he was in the office all day.
“Fill me in,” he said.
“My father was recently diagnosed with dementia. He’s in the middle stage. We saw the signs and lied to ourselves about it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “He’s so young.”
“He’s sixty-eight,” she said. “He should have retired years ago and didn’t. He said he was going to at sixty-five but held on for Shelly.”
“The woman who stole from him?” Talk about a double whammy.
“Yeah. Ironic, isn’t it?” she asked sarcastically. “She was a widow and far from retirement, but she’d have a hard time finding another job since she’d been with him from the beginning. Being nice and noble cost him everything.”
Matt felt there was a double meaning there but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“It sounds it. Catch me up on the criminal aspect of this.”
“They are still gathering everything to get the final tally, but over almost a decade it could be close to five hundred thousand. Shelly can’t seem to pinpoint anything but said she started small when her husband was sick.
That was close to ten years ago. When he died, he left her with a lot of debt. Then I think she got greedy.”
“That always happens. People dip their toe in and say they will pay it back. Then they realize no one noticed, so they become bolder.”
“That’s it exactly. My parents would like to sue to get back what they can. It won’t be much. She’s got little at this point and will have legal fees.”
“Does she own a home?” he asked.
“She does. No one wants to leave a person homeless,” she said. “Or I wouldn’t, but my mother said she would because she needs to protect my father and his long-term care.”
“It could be your parents that are homeless if they don’t get some of this money back.” She blinked her eyes over his bluntness. “Sorry to say that. I don’t know their personal financial situation. I’m only throwing out all sides.”
“It’s not great,” she said. “Don’t be sorry. That is part of it. It was a dying business my father should have walked away from years ago. He should have sold it or the building and invested that money.”
“He owns the building it’s in?” he asked. It was in a nice commercial area. “What kind of shape is it in?”
“That’s one saving grace,” she said, forcing a smile.
“The building has a lot of value. More than he would have had years ago if he’d retired.
It needs some cosmetic work, but it’s not horrible.
He’d taken a loan out to make repairs about ten years ago.
He’s got a line of credit to cover bills that were falling behind. He could never figure out why.”
“Now he knows,” he said. What a shitty way to find out.
She nodded. “He showed signs of memory loss a few years ago and I believe my mother pushed it off as stress over the business. Some of it age.”
“It’s easy enough to do that,” he said.
“I told her not to beat herself up over it. There is nothing we can do about the past and it’s better to prepare for the future.
My father is declining fast so we have to take care of this now while he can.
He agrees to selling the business. My mother has reached out to a few people she knows to see if they are interested and no one is biting.
There are several contractors willing to buy large quantities of inventory. ”
“Let me guess,” he said. “At a discounted rate?”
She shrugged. “I can’t blame them for wanting a bargain. We are in a bind, but it doesn’t appear as if anyone is robbing my father either. At least other than employees. I don’t know enough about the business.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Can I ask why you or EJ never got involved in it?”
She pursed her lips. “It’s not something I was interested in. Not that I know what the heck I want to do with my life and that sounds ridiculous at my age, but there it is. Didn’t you always tell me I was being stupid or silly?”
Matt hated those words thrown back in his face decades later that he’d said while trying to get her attention or impress her.
He was a dick back then.
A smitten one that had no game when it came to women, though he’d thought he had.
“I was wrong,” he said. “And I’m sorry. You’ve always been a friendly, upbeat person who I thought could take a joke. I just went too far all the time.”
Anya held his stare for what felt like minutes but was only a few seconds. “As I said earlier, it’s in the past and I need to move forward. That’s why I called you.”
He was going to get to that, but she brought it up. “Tell me about that. There are a lot of attorneys you could have called.”
“There are, but I thought of what you said. I’m not sure I believe it all, but you seemed sincere and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“I am,” he said. “I’m not sure how I can prove it to you.”
“You can earn my trust by helping me with our family situation,” she said. “That’s the first step.”
Shit. He wasn’t sure what she was asking.
He’d help, no doubt. But that didn’t mean he could give them the results they were looking for.
“What is it you need from me?”
“A couple of things. My parents need to redo their wills. You asked about EJ. I don’t know if you’re aware, but my brother and father never got along.
My father always thought EJ would take over the business and he had no interest. He felt it was dying and he was right.
Let’s be honest, big chains and online purchases, overnight shipping, and everything else have hurt over the years. ”
“I can’t profess to know much about your father’s business, but I’m assuming the bulk of his clients were contractors who needed supplies on the spot?”
“They are or were. Many ordered through my father also rather than dealing online themselves. But the world has changed and he didn’t keep up with the times.
He should have gone online like others and was slow to do it.
He never caught up and the cost was more than he could invest when he knew he was going to retire. ”
“It happens,” he said. It was not the first family-owned business that fell prey to the changing times.
“Aside from the wills being updated, my parents want to sue Shelly, so they need legal representation there. Medical proxies have to be updated for my mother and me in terms of my father’s care.”
“Not EJ?” he asked.
“No. EJ lives in Australia. We gave him every opportunity to be part of our decisions and his take is there isn’t anything in it for him. There’s nothing left for him to get and he and my father never got along, so he’s not interested in being involved. That’s the polite summary.”
Matt did not know any of that.
Phoebe had never talked about it. He wouldn’t have thought to ask.
He’d bet his parents knew though.
“And the not-so-polite summary?” he asked. “I’d like to know what I’m dealing with.”
“That I don’t trust him not to find any way he can to take what he thinks is his even while my mother is alive.
My mother can and will care for my father right now.
They have good insurance and a policy for long-term care.
Something they got years ago as a precaution.
It’s paying off for them now. EJ wants my parents’ house or the sale of the business to go in my name and his so that if my father ends up in a home, it’s not taken from them. ”
“That is part of estate planning,” he said.
“Yeah, and the kids allow their parents to still have the only access to that money. EJ won’t. He’ll take it and spend it. No way.”
“What about putting it in your name?”
“I don’t want it,” she said, shaking her head. “If it comes down to that, sure, I’ll do what is right. But it’s a battle I’d have with EJ that I can’t take on if he found out. My mother and I are just touching the surface of everything. The way my father is declining, I’m not sure it matters.”
“Got it.”
He could tell it wasn’t a topic she wanted to talk more about.
“So let’s see. Wills, medical proxy, lawsuit.
” She was counting on her hands. “Oh, the sale of the business. I’ll be listing it as the business as a whole next week.
My mother has auditors giving her an idea of the value.
It’s more the building than anything. If there are no bites in the first two weeks, we’ll change it to only the building and start liquidating the supplies. ”
“Smart,” he said.
“I’m not as dumb as people think,” she said.
“I never thought you were,” he said. “I know I keep saying I’m sorry, but that is the last thing I’d want anyone, especially you to think.”
“You said it enough,” she said, closing one eye at him.
“I have to live with that. In the past month it’s actually eaten at me to find out how you felt. I had no idea, and if I’d had, I would have stopped it.”
“Phoebe knew,” she said.
Seemed Ben did too, yet no one told him. Or told him seriously enough for him to understand.
“She used to say things to me, but I thought she was joking.”
“Not everyone jokes about life, Matt,” she said. “It’d be great if it was funny day in and day out, but it’s not. There are real life struggles that people have behind closed doors they are too embarrassed about to be known.”
He squirmed in his chair as if someone lit a fire under his ass.
This was getting worse and worse in his eyes.
There didn’t seem to be any way he could make it right.
“I know that now. I see it at my job. If it makes you feel any better, part of the reason I’m still single is that many of the women I’ve dated feel the same way you do. Life isn’t all fun and games and they didn’t like that I don’t take things seriously outside of my career.”
“Oh, so it wasn’t just me that got the privilege of your cockiness? I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or not. Yeah, not.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but there was a knock on his door, and it opened. His legal assistant, Nettie, popped her head in. “Amber and Elliot Emerson are here.”
He stood up. “I’ll come get them.”
It sounded as if her father might need some help.
“I can do it,” Anya said.
He turned to look at her before she bolted on him. Something she did often as a kid when he thought of the past and should have realized what he was doing was wrong.
“You want to trust me, then let me help you, not just your parents.”
It was a step in the right direction when she nodded her head, but she still followed him down the hall.