Chapter 2 The Legal Doctrine of Finders Keepers #2
Lainey and Bree were in two very different tax brackets.
It was a source of tension in their friendship, as Bree had far more in common with the visitors of Timber Creek than with locals like Lainey.
Bree’s family owned the Groff Retreat, a five-star resort made up of secluded luxury cabins, all designed by the father of the “natural architecture” movement, Vincent Groff.
It was one of those obscenely extravagant destinations where privacy-seeking celebrities could disappear off the face of the planet while eating breakfast pastries prepared by a protégé of Gaston Len?tre.
The rest of the town existed in confusing contrast to—or as seasonal employees of—the high-end hideaway.
But borrowing money from Bree was a nonstarter for Lainey.
Bree didn’t “lend” money. She “gifted” it.
As she put it, she refused to be “a debt collector to her friends.” But Bree’s “gifts” had a way of corroding all of her friendships.
Lainey cared about her too much to let something like that happen to them.
Lainey shook her head. “I’m not taking your money.”
“Well, I’ve only dated one other lawyer, and she’s left the business to write romance novels, so for now, we’re stuck with Mark.”
Her grandmother leaned forward. “If you need money, Lainey—”
“I don’t need money,” she interrupted.
Lainey desperately needed money, but borrowing from her grandmother—who’d recently burned through a small windfall after finding a lit cigarette in her unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks—was not an option.
In fact, Lainey had been making payments to her grandmother’s care facility just to keep her lights on.
Literally. Though she hadn’t told her grandmother, as inexorable pride and poor financial management skills were inherited traits among the Davis women.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Lainey assured them. “It was so long ago. He’s probably forgotten about it.”
A petite woman who looked no older than twenty-two leaned out the door of an office and beckoned them back.
Lainey’s outfit was all wrong for such a serious meeting.
It was that time of year when the temperature outside was unpredictable, making the indoors uniquely uncomfortable, as every business was either too hot or too cold.
She’d meant to swap her regular brown suede coat for something a little less “seventies rocker.” But with picking up Gran (and then the subsequent Rolo theft), she hadn’t had time to iron the black blazer she reserved for funerals and that one unfortunate court appearance for a moving violation on the aforementioned Razor scooter.
She quickly rummaged through her bag for a claw clip and pulled her hair up into a messy twist she hoped gave her the appearance of a moderately serious person, or at the very least, made her look slightly less like the orange-haired Muppet.
“Here. Let me,” Bree said, adjusting the clip and delicately fluffing Lainey’s bangs.
Bree had that kind of expensive, chestnut-brown hair that never dared to move out of place and seemed to deepen in hue with each generation of wealth.
Lainey’s hair, on the other hand, was a wild red that required too much effort to tame, so she usually didn’t.
But today, with her home on the line, her appearance needed to give off at least a tiny whiff of responsibility.
It was a lot to put on a tortoise hair clip.
When they walked into Mark’s office, he stood up from behind his oak desk, wearing a shiny blue golf polo and a foam neck brace.
There were no windows in his office, just fluorescent lights illuminating a bookcase packed with worn brown books that read West’s Wisconsin Statutes along the spine in faded letters.
Mark greeted Bree first, extending his arm between several precariously tall towers of paper files like a snake slithering through brush.
Lainey couldn’t tell if the sight of his desk meant he had far too many clients or dangerously few.
Her friend made the mistake of inquiring into the provenance of the neck brace and was met with a sigh and the words “Nasty walk.” Lainey had no earthly idea what constituted a “nasty walk,” but she assumed that if he’d wanted to provide a sufficient explanation, he would have.
Instead, Lainey offered a wave and said, “Good to see you again, Mark.”
Mark stared at her blankly, as if she’d accidentally greeted him in Cantonese. Perhaps he hadn’t heard her? Panicking, she repeated herself, but this time—regrettably—with a pair of finger guns. “It’s good to—”
“Can we do this without resorting to intimidation, Elaine?” He implored her like one would a disobedient child.
“Oh, I didn’t…” She lowered her hands and let her explanations go. “Lainey is fine. Do you remember my grandmother, the original Elaine?”
Gran greeted Mark with an appraising nod. “Markie.”
Mark’s bravado collapsed under the weight of the nickname. He attempted to muster up some lost confidence by clearing his throat and gesturing for them to sit. “Bree told me a bit about your situation, and I’ve had Whitney conduct a title search.”
Lainey had forgotten about the young woman in the room with them. Whitney hugged the wall tightly, succeeding in what was possibly her ultimate goal: disappearing into the drywall.
“Along with some preliminary research through public records, court documents, and so on and so forth, et cetera, et cetera,” Mark continued, his eyes scanning a printout.
Lainey sunk into her too-deep chair and prayed he didn’t bill by the word.
“We can’t find any document that ties you to your residence on Norwood Lake. ”
“What? That’s insane,” Lainey exclaimed, just as Gran countered casually, “Well, there wouldn’t be paperwork.”
Lainey turned to face her grandmother, who was adjusting her lipstick with her pinkie. “We knew it was our house. There seemed no reason to get other people involved. It’s no one’s business what we own or don’t own.”
Lainey looked to Bree, who was equally confused. Lainey had lived in that little house in the woods since her mother had left her with Gran when she was seven. Her mom, Camille, usually came by once a year, always bearing gifts, like a Parisian, emotionally withholding Santa Claus.
With Gran’s decreased mobility and recent tortious windfall that had mostly afforded her an apartment in a lakeside retirement community, Camille had become even more of a stranger. Lainey’s lifelong constants had always been Gran and that cabin.
“Gran, I’ve been paying property taxes on that house.”
The older woman wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why on earth you’ve been doing that.”
“We’ve been living there for over twenty years! I have my heights marked on the back of a door frame. Whose house am I living in, Gran?”
“Ours!” Gran announced. “In many ways…”
“But in a legal way…” Mark pushed the title document across his desk. “Gilbert Hodges, or rather, his nephew, who recently inherited the cabin resort on Norwood Lake, the “Shore Thing.” And in the land survey, he discovered that your house is also one of his properties.”
Lainey was familiar enough with the Shore Thing to know that calling the collection of dilapidated shacks a “resort” was pushing it.
“There’s no way my house belongs to the Shore Thing.
” Half of the log cabins owned by the recently deceased Gil Hodges were underwater, and the other half were occupied by tanks housing his illegal turtles.
Gil had been a harmless weirdo, but there was no world in which she was turning over her home to anyone, let alone someone sharing her former neighbor’s genetics (may he rest in peace, obviously). “This has to be some mistake.”
“Gilbert was always too wrapped up in his amphibians to notice we were there,” Gran offered, as though that explained away years of apparent illegal occupation. Lainey felt the blood drain from her face and pool into her toes.
She’d always thought the process of losing everything would be more of a tumultuous roller coaster of misfortunes than the swift kick in the shins of a real estate assessment.
“But Vincent said he’d always wanted me to live there,” Gran added.
At that, every head in the room jutted to attention with wide, wild eyes.
“Vincent…who, Elaine?” Bree said, seemingly baffled.
“Groff, of course.” Gran nodded, and Lainey could feel the wheels in her brain turning slowly.
Bree’s voice went up with each syllable. “Are you saying that one of the most famous architects in the world…”
“The world” was an exaggeration, but between her family’s elite resort and a recent Netflix true-crime documentary on an architectural cult led by a Mary Kay saleswoman who referred to herself as Lady Goddess and believed she was receiving direct transmissions from Vincent Groff’s ghost, he was definitely one of the most famous architects in America.
He was the father of the modern environmental architecture movement of the twentieth century and a longtime resident of Timber Creek until he died sometime in the eighties.
“…wanted you to live in your house? Are you saying Vincent Groff designed your house?” Bree’s voice was insistent.
“We dated briefly in my early twenties.” Gran waved her hand as though her courtship with a man who MIT offered multiple courses on had simply never floated to the top of her mind at any point in Lainey’s lifetime.
“Apparently, I had inspired the design. I don’t know.
Vincent was always so chatty after, it was hard to retain it all.
He never managed to finish it, but when I came back to Timber Creek, I paid Vincent a visit before he died and he said, ‘Elaine, Forest’s Bridge was made for you. ’ ”
“Forest’s Bridge?” Mark interjected, just as Bree screeched, “It’s real!?”