Chapter 7 #3
“Yeah, uh-oh is right, but maybe it will be okay. Stop in at Tiffany’s place and bring a load of feed that she had delivered today.”
“Sure,” he said, shaking his head with a smile. “I guess that’s an ongoing thing. What will it take to get the feed delivered to the Haven directly?”
“Maybe the next time it will be delivered to us,” Toby teased, followed by a snort. “Not. There is talk of a big truckload coming soon though,” he added.
“It would be nice to get out of these nickel-and-dime small loads. If the vendor won’t deliver, surely we can hire a delivery person to do all these errands.
It would at least be a part-time job for someone here in town,” Sterling pointed out.
“We’re getting enough animals out there now to support that, I would think. ”
Toby added something else to his list. “Tiffany also needs medicines brought out, and her vehicle is just a little on the small side for the whole load.”
“Got it. No problem.”
“So, how did the lawyer visit go?”
Sterling sighed. “It was interesting, definitely not a slam dunk, but he thinks there’s a good chance the property is in my name, which is something I wasn’t aware of.”
“In your name?” Toby repeated.
“Yes, in my name and my mother’s. The attorney wants to do more research and get documents in hand before he goes too far, but it looks promising.”
“And since your mother is deceased …”
“Exactly, so, in theory, it’s mine. So, they’ve been squatting then, in theory, and that’s a whole different story as well.”
Toby groaned. “Right because squatters supposedly have all kinds of rights now too. How the hell we got to that point, I don’t know.”
Sterling said in a huff, “Neither do I.”
Sterling drove to Tiffany’s clinic and parked around the back. As soon as he got there, the back door opened, and Lindsey stepped out. She gave him a bright wave.
“Hey, I just stopped by to get some meds from Tiffany for the animals at the shelter in town.”
He hopped out and teased, “Wow, we just can’t get rid of you, can we?”
Lindsey burst out laughing. “No, except as soon as anybody says I’m not wanted, I’m outta there.”
“Oh gosh no, don’t do that,” he muttered. “It’s nice to have people ready to come help us at the Haven.”
“Which is what you’re doing too, I see,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but I’m in a holding pattern at the moment.”
She looked at him and frowned. “That sounds ominous.”
“Not ominous. I just talked to the lawyer about my aunt’s place this morning.”
“Are you looking at buying it?” she asked.
He glanced at her and shook his head. “Apparently it may well be in my name already. I don’t know for sure.
Maybe my mother had it set up that way all along.
Anyway, it looks as if my aunt has been living there all this time, but apparently she may have some degree of squatters’ rights or some damn thing. ”
“Good God, and you didn’t know?”
“No. Nothing ever came my way—well, except one tax notification not too long ago. Anyway, apparently my aunt directed the distribution of any paperwork in order to keep it nicely under wraps,” he guessed.
“And, since I headed off to the service the minute I was old enough, that made it even easier for her. Now that I’ve found out and may want to pursue my claim to the place, it may not be quite as easy as one would think. ”
She frowned at him, shaking her head. “It shouldn’t be so easy to steal land from a child.”
“And yet, as we know, it happens all the time.”
“It used to, sure,” she corrected him, “but there are laws for that now.”
“But that doesn’t mean she’ll be very happy about it.”
Lindsey didn’t know what to say to that obviously.
He groaned. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, not at all. I used to know a girl in school who was in that family,” she shared. “I’m not sure what the relationship was. I mean, we weren’t friends or anything, but we were in the same grade. I don’t know if that’s your aunt’s daughter or not.”
“It could be,” he said, “and, if so, that would make her my cousin.”
“She was part of the place, and she lived there,” she recalled.
He frowned at her and nodded. “Yeah, my mom’s place.”
She winced. “God, that’s so messed up.”
“Yep,” he agreed cheerfully. “I guess in the worst-case scenario I would have to accept the fact that somebody else got to steal property out from under me, and part of that is my problem because I didn’t know that the property was in my name to begin with.”
“And your aunt will just say that it couldn’t be in the name of a child,” Lindsey suggested. “So, did your father have the same last name as yours, Monroe?”
He frowned at her. “Yes, per my birth certificate. I never saw him, never asked Ma about him. So she may have put my name on there in trust,” he noted. “I didn’t ask the lawyer about it because I would think that the in trust part would have run out a long time ago.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, “but I don’t know how that works.”
“Neither do I, but, the bottom line is, if my aunt is not willing to give up the land, there’ll be a legal fight.”
“I would think so,” she declared. “It’s not as if you don’t need a home of your own.”
“She’ll probably say she put in all kinds of improvements with the expectation of keeping it and that it was hers.”
“And that would have to be proven, I would think.”
Just then Sterling’s phone rang. He looked at his screen and grimaced. “Well, look at that. Here’s my lawyer already.”
He answered, and his lawyer began, “I made contact with the family, and, just a word of warning, they are not happy.”
“Of course they’re not happy,” he muttered, with a sigh. “That would be way too easy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, she mentioned something about the proverbial return of the long-lost son,” he shared. “In a fit of temper, she spat something to the effect of, I thought he died. Why the hell couldn’t he have died? That would have made life so much easier.”
“So, she knew I was in the military?”
“I think so, although she didn’t come right out and say that. Just that she thought and/or hoped you had died.”
“If that truly were the case, she would have tried to get the property in her name long ago.”
“We already know she’d tried at least once and was thwarted by her own attorney, and now that you’ve reared your ugly head,” he said, with a note of humor, “you’re messing up all her plans.
As predicted, she also claimed to have put a ton of improvements into the place, how it was hers, and she wasn’t giving it up without a fight. ”
“Of course not,” Sterling noted, with a sigh.
“As I mentioned already, you could be in for a fight,” the attorney reminded him. “You also need to take a look at the property, but she will not give you access.”
“Even though my name is on the property deed?”
“Yes, even though your name is on it. And it was in a trust, in case you’re wondering.”
“So, she just decided that there shouldn’t have been a trust or what?”
“That is where hiding from all kinds of things gets a person into trouble,” the attorney said. “I did talk with her. I told her to contact a lawyer and to have her lawyer contact me. Then she basically told me to F off.”
“So, what next?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he declared. “Now we take it to court.”
“And we evict her or what?”
“We start with eviction,” he explained, “because she has no legal standing. Therefore, if she’ll fight it, she has to get a lawyer.
I would think she doesn’t have the money for that, what with her failing business.
Regardless, if she doesn’t want to fight this in court, then fine.
She just needs to move off the property. ”
“And how do we stop her from destroying everything in the meantime?”
“That will be the next challenge,” he admitted, “but let’s take one thing at a time.”
“Great,” he muttered. “So this is how I make friends when I return to town.”
The lawyer burst out laughing. “Yeah, that’s true. Yet, if they’re on the side of your aunt, they may not be friend material anyway.” With that, he added, “I’ll keep you up to date.” And he rang off.
Sterling shrugged as he looked over at Lindsey.
“Wow,” she said, “that’s just unbelievable. I mean, I didn’t know the girl from school very well, but she seemed nice.”
“And now she’ll be among those caught up in this.”
“That’s not your responsibility though. She’s also an adult now and fully capable of making her own decisions in life.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t expecting her life to be right here on that farm.”
“I don’t know. She was always very quiet. I haven’t a clue what her mother was like at all, but, from what we just heard, having her for a mother would have been a challenge in itself.”
“It sure would be,” he suspected. He quickly loaded everything up and announced, “I’m heading back out. Are you coming out tonight?”
“Not tonight. I’ve got a volleyball tournament.
I only play as a second when nobody else is there to step in because I really suck at it.
” When he tried to hold back his smile, she laughed.
“Seriously I suck at it, but, if I don’t play, the team can’t play because they don’t have the requisite number of players, so … ”
“Right,” he replied, “so you’ll go do what you do best.”
She nodded. “Yeah, in this case, that would be getting myself out of the way so everybody else can play properly.” He burst out laughing, as she grinned.
“Believe me that I only got signed up for this by friends pressuring me. I have no intention of getting caught up any further than I have to. I told them that I didn’t want to play this year at all.
However, if I didn’t, they couldn’t field a team and wouldn’t get to play at all.
So they begged me join with the agreement that they would only call if they had no other option.
” She sighed. “And apparently that’s the situation tonight. ”
“Which also means,” he pointed out, “that, without consistent practice, you’ll never get any better.”