93. Chapter 93
“What in the Sam Hill—”
Aldus Whitlock pushed the spectacles up his nose and squinted at Lindsey. He probably didn’t recognize her with sopping hair plastered to her head, standing on his porch in the middle of a storm.
“I know it’s late. I need to talk to you,” she said.
His face slackened with recognition. “Lindsey? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Not really. She’d watched the storms, one after another, through the patio door after her dad and brother left. The house was empty. The cavern in her chest, also empty. Her future?
A crater in the ground created by Jason Young.
Sudden and brutal anger directed at Jason Sr. got her moving. A picture texted from Graham with Helen looking exhausted and happy sealed it. She’d rummaged through Jason’s desk for his address book, thrown a suitcase in the car, and driven through the latest storm to Whitlock’s house.
“We failed,” she told the attorney now.
His bushy brows puckered and he ushered her inside.
“Come on, come on.” He cursed and closed the door behind her. “Out in this weather at this hour. You must be crazy.”
She followed him through an open living room to a dark hallway.
“I must be crazy. I told him I didn’t want to do this,” he muttered. As they passed a bathroom, he pulled a towel off a rack and handed it back to Lindsey without breaking stride. “If I’d have known what I was signing up for…ringing my bell at all times of the night.”
He flicked on a light in a cramped home office.
Lindsey used the towel to wring the rain out of her hair and sat in one of the chairs facing the aged wooden desk Whitlock scooted behind.
He adjusted his brown robe over a pair of striped, brown pajamas, frowning down his pointy nose and folding his wrinkled hands on a pile of papers in front of him.
“Well?” he demanded. “You going to tell me what’s so important you dragged me out of bed? An after-hours house call is going to cost you handsomely.”
“I figured,” Lindsey said. She held the damp towel in her lap and watched him set a digital timer beside his computer keyboard.
“I’ve really enjoyed all the middle fingers to the cameras, by the way,” he said. “Jason was a vulgar bastard too.”
“Huh?”
“Everyone flicking off the camera every chance they get. Hilarious.”
“Oh. Right.” Lindsey swallowed. “Mr. Whitlock?”
“Spit it out. Meter’s running.”
“They’re gone. It’s over.”
“What you do mean, they’re gone?”
“Helen’s in Austin and Graham went after her. They won’t make it back tonight. I have no idea where Jase is, but I know he’s not coming back either. We failed.”
“This is what couldn’t wait until morning?”
“This is as serious as it gets, isn’t it?” she asked. “I tried. We all did.”
Her gaze trailed over the overflowing filing cabinets in the corner and the ancient printer beneath the room’s only window. There was enough paper and boxes inside his office to muffle the rumbling thunder outside.
“It’s funny you’re the one sitting here and not them. You get the house either way.”
“It’s funny Jason didn’t account for things we couldn’t control? That he’d leave his boys nothing for one mistake?”
Whitlock fought back a smirk. “He always said you were smart. I wanted to believe him, but you were dating Graham, and I’ve known that jack wagon his whole life. Makes a man wonder.”
She didn’t know how to respond.
“You think he would’ve done this whole cockamamie thing—which I told him was ridiculous, by the way—without a contingency plan?”
“Contingency?” Lindsey asked.
He shook out his arms and, with an exaggerated sigh, logged into his computer.
“Several.” He angled the screen to show her. “A whole mess of them.”
She leaned over to read the individual files labeled Graham, Jase, Lindsey, Helen, and W.
“What’s the W for?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “For later.”
Whitlock clicked his mouse on the file labeled with her name. Inside the file were several videos. With another click, Jason Young’s face filled the screen.
“Hey, kiddo.” He smiled from behind his desk in his study. “Well, if you’re watching this, then things didn’t go the way I hoped.”
“Oh,” she said on a sharp inhale.
“What can I say? My boys are idiots. I expected better, but”—Jason shrugged and shook his head—“what can you do? My condolences are in the deed, my dear. When I bought the house for Theresa, she didn’t want anything to do with me.
I hoped it would show her what I had a hard time saying.
I know I’m not the only one. I didn’t just drop a small fortune on her dream house, I came back. I came back and I stayed.”
“He won’t,” Lindsey said, as if he could hear. Whitlock’s eyes twitched from the screen to Lindsey then back to his old friend.
“The boys will get their due,” he went on. “There were never any dogs in Australia—but don’t tell them that. Let ’em sweat for a while.”
Lindsey covered her mouth and laughed, and Whitlock finally cracked a smile.
“I have a new mission for you. Remember the red notebook I gave you? Do you still have it? Of course you do. You’re sentimental.”
Sentimental. A laugh burst out of her mouth knowing that outside of her future tree today, the red notebook was filled with erotica inspired by her experiences with Jase on the trip.
“Theresa had one, too.” In the video, Jason turned in his chair and pulled a weathered, leather-bound book off the shelf directly behind him and held it up to the camera.
“It’s yours, on one condition. You were going to be a writer.
There’s nothing wrong with being a bartender, honey.
Writing isn’t the kind of thing you do. It’s not a day job.
It’s who you are. I want you to have Theresa’s journal, as long as you use the red notebook to tell your own story. ”
“I don’t have anything worth writing about,” Lindsey said.
“Now, before you say you don’t have anything to write about,” Jason said, as if reaching into Whitlock’s office from beyond the grave, “spend some time reading Theresa’s journal.
She said the same thing, and her musings filled a damn book.
” He leaned forward. “Better yet, start with how you ended up here, watching this. I bet it’s a heck of a story. ”
Whitlock returned the monitor to its original position and sat back. Lindsey let Jason’s message settle.
“So, they still get the money?” she asked.
Whitlock rolled his eyes as if it should’ve been obvious and she didn’t just spend a month of her life following Jason’s rules to ensure Jase and Graham collected their inheritance. “Of course they get the money. Well, most likely.”
“Most likely? That’s not what Jason just said.”
“He said a lot of things, and it’s my godforsaken job to try to keep it all straight. Contingency after contingency. I told him it was a bad idea. What did he care? He’s not here to deliver the news or get woken up to sort through alternate endings.”
“Alternate endings?”
“There were half a dozen ways this could’ve played out. In this case, Jason would never punish Graham for choosing love over money. And you—you were always getting the journal, but the video message and…some other details might’ve been different.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you until it’s time.”
“There is no other time,” Lindsey argued. Whitlock’s mouth was a tight line in service of his friend. She stood. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Well, thank heavens, I can get back to bed.”
Whitlock noted the length of their meeting, turning the small timer off with a beep. At the office door, Lindsey asked one last question.
“Is there an alternate ending…for me and Jase?”
He frowned. “What makes you think this is the end?”