Chapter 17 #2
With Evie’s pikelets pushed to one side, Jemma, Dad and Sam sat with Evie and Paul in their farmhouse, staring with differing degrees of dismay at the paperwork scattered across the kitchen table.
Courtesy of some outdated kits unearthed at the local post office, Paul and Evie had had a go at drawing up their own wills—a move guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any lawyer.
‘These are just not going to be valid,’ Jemma repeated. Usually she avoided estate law—it was work for the lawyer equivalent of accountants—but Evie’s and Paul’s wills were more interesting, as they were seeking to exclude their daughter from the inheritance.
‘You understand them, though?’ Paul demanded, tapping the paperwork with a gnarled finger. ‘We want to leave the property equally to Sam and Jack, and that’s it.’
‘I understand, but I also believe that your daughter is in a strong position to contest the wills. So let me draw up the paperwork and I’ll make sure they’re watertight.
As watertight as possible. Although, this isn’t my field,’ she added honestly.
‘But I can find you someone who specialises in estate law. Just …’ She tapped the papers, the spots of coffee and crumpled corners attesting to how much they’d been pored over. ‘Don’t use these.’
‘We don’t want to see anyone else,’ Paul declared. ‘It’s none of their business. This is for family only.’
Across the table, Sam stared down at her clenched hands, her chest heaving irregularly. Jemma wished there was a way she could ease and expedite what would always be an unpleasant process. No one enjoyed discussing what their last input into the world would be.
‘We don’t need someone from the city poking around, telling us what to do with what we own,’ Paul continued. ‘This farm has always been for the kids and that’s exactly where it will go.’
‘Jemma would find you the right person to handle it, Paul,’ Dad said. ‘Someone she knows well, trusts. It’ll be almost like family.’
‘There’s nothing like family,’ Paul asserted.
‘Except some of our friends,’ Evie said. ‘You didn’t think you’d like Monica coming in to clean every week, but look at us all now, thick as thieves.’
‘Well, I admit that was a threesome I wasn’t expecting,’ Paul said, then chuckled as Jemma’s shocked gaze went to him. ‘But I don’t suppose that’s what you’re offering, Pandora?’
Evie snorted. ‘Like you’d remember what to do with her.’
Jemma had just been thinking that Paul and Evie reminded her of her own grandparents, but maybe not so much.
‘Sorry,’ Sam mouthed, shaking her head resignedly.
‘Jemma would only recommend someone she has confidence in,’ Dad said. ‘Actually, maybe there’ll be someone at the function on Saturday, Jemma? You can introduce me, then they won’t be strangers by the time Paul and Evie meet them.’
‘Seriously, Pierce? I told you: you’re not chaperoning me.’
‘What’s this, then?’ Paul asked.
‘Jemma’s got a bit of trouble in the city, so we’re making sure that she’s not alone there,’ Sam said.
Evie patted Jemma’s hand. ‘What kind of trouble is that, love?’
‘Just low-level intimidation. Goes with the job sometimes.’ The more often she told herself that, the more it would normalise her situation—she hoped.
‘I could come with you,’ Paul offered gleefully. ‘I scrub up all right, you know.’
‘I’m sure you do—’
‘Unless it’s a Friday night, you barely wash, never mind scrub up,’ Evie said.
Paul winked. ‘That’s your fault, my love. Friday nights were always … special.’
‘Ugh, fingers in my ears!’ Sam protested. ‘No wonder you let Jack and me fight over which Friday-night movie to watch on TV, then said you were too tired to stay up for it.’
‘I don’t need a bodyguard,’ Jemma said, hoping to bring the conversation back to a level of normality.
‘That’s what Whitney Houston said,’ Paul replied.
‘No, it’s what Whitney Houston’s character said,’ Evie corrected. ‘And if you’re trying to say you’re a patch on Kevin Costner …’
‘You mean on Kevin Costner’s character,’ Paul returned quickly.
Jemma shook her head, unable to control her totally unprofessional chuckle. ‘I can see we won’t have a problem with the “of sound mind” declaration.’
‘The important bits of the body are still pretty good, too,’ Paul boasted.
‘You mean as good as they ever were,’ Evie scoffed.
‘Seriously, though, Pandora,’ Paul said, turning to Jemma. ‘I can come along on Saturday. I might not look like much, but I can always stick a shotty down my trouser leg.’
‘Shotty?’
‘A shotgun,’ Sam clarified. ‘And no, Pops, you can’t. You know Jemma works closely with the police? You’d be arrested in an instant.’
‘If she works with them, I’d have indignity, right, Jem?’
‘Indemnity,’ she corrected gently.
‘Oh, no, he was right enough the first time.’ Evie chortled.
A kerfuffle of yipping drew their attention to the litter of pups beneath the kitchen window. Dad had apparently given up on the conversation and sat on the floor, the puppies climbing and tumbling over his long legs.
‘We might have to get one of these to be a sea dog on the Pelicanet, Sam,’ he said.
Jemma was surprised—they hadn’t had pets when she was growing up.
‘Definitely take one. In fact, take three,’ Evie said. ‘They should have been put outside weeks ago, but Paul’s getting soft in his old age. Just because he feels the cold more now, he reckons they will too.’
‘I’m only trying to persuade you to warm me up, Evie,’ Paul said. ‘But you take your pick, Pierce.’
Setting aside the wills, Jemma knelt among the chocolate-coloured tangle of milky-smelling pups.
One waddled toward her on unsteady legs, the blue eyes reminding her—ridiculously—of Hamish.
Its tongue lolled comically from one side of its mouth, as though walking straight was taking an incredible amount of concentration.
‘There you are, one for you too, Pandora,’ Paul gloated. ‘Can’t go wrong with a good dog. Protector, pal and a good listener to boot.’
‘You make it sound like I should keep one myself,’ Evie said.
Paul stood stiffly then shuffled around the table to wedge himself between his wife and granddaughter.
He put an arm around Evie’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze.
‘Even the most loyal hound won’t look at you with as much adoration as I do, my Evie.
But you know I keep telling you to choose one for company when I’m gone. ’
‘Pops,’ Sam said, a sob in her voice. ‘Don’t.’
‘What’s that?’ Paul cupped his hearing aid. ‘You bring Pandora here to lock up my last wishes all tight and legal, but I’m not supposed to talk about death? How do I plan for after if I’m not allowed to mention it?’
‘Pops, I can’t manage—’ Sam started, then hid her face in her hands.
An unfamiliar wash of empathy cinched Jemma’s chest and she swallowed hard.
‘Of course you can,’ Pops said. ‘You’ve always been able to, Samantha.
And now you’ve got Pierce to look after you, I don’t need to worry about that other bludger.
’ Jemma assumed the reference was to Sam’s ex-husband.
‘Though that’s not to say that you can’t have a pup as well, if that’s what you’re angling at.
There’s nothing much that a good dog can’t fix. ’
‘Don’t worry, Sam,’ Evie said. ‘Your grandfather is talking rubbish, as usual. He knows full well that he’s irreplaceable.
I’d need to take on at least half-a-dozen puppies to cause me one-tenth of the trouble he does.
Besides, I won’t be hanging round all that long after him.
We just need to get this place sorted for you and Jack.
Don’t want certain people waltzing back in, trying to lay claim to what’s always been yours. ’
Sam shook her head miserably. ‘You know this is all we ever talk about now?’
‘That’s what happens when something’s on your to-do list, but it doesn’t get done,’ Paul said, patting Sam’s shoulder clumsily. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll get it sorted. Then everything will be right as rain.’
Paul was correct: conversation was what happened when action was lacking.
The subject of their imminent demise and the division of their assets had obviously been the morbid topic at every gathering for the past few months.
If visits to her own grandparents were like that, instead of a riotous tumble of noise and joy and life, Jemma suspected she would find herself at their table less often.
Jemma pressed a kiss into the nape of the puppy’s neck, set him back down with the others, then straightened. ‘So I’ll take care of this paperwork for you and we won’t get any outsiders involved.’ It was odd how the inference that she wasn’t an ‘outsider’ gave her a feeling of belonging.
The puppy scuttled across the floor and pawed at a cardboard box.
‘Oh, stop him, Paul! He’ll wake the ducklings.’
‘Ducklings?’ Sam asked her grandmother. ‘Why aren’t they in the coop?’
Evie shook her head. ‘Native ducklings. Some waste of oxygen ploughed his ute through an entire family last week. Tara Paech picked up the survivors, but she had to rush off to do something, so she handed them over to Paul. Said she’d collect them to deliver to Charlee Brennan’s, but we’ve not seen hide nor hair of her since. ’
The knowledge that people could be horrible even in such an idyllic setting was somehow worse than hearing of atrocities in the city. Yet that wasn’t what made Jemma frown. There was something about Evie’s story that tugged at her. An intuition that it could be of vital importance.