Chapter 10 #5
His granddad nodded, then his expression changed.
“I know it’s asking a lot, and maybe you can’t, but I would consider it a blessing if you could somehow find a way to forgive me someday.
… I believed Penny. It was the dulled senses of a grieving father and grandfather And I just believed her.
Then, years later, when I found out what she’d done, I hated her, and I’ve hated her ever since, and that’s not good either.
I keep asking God for forgiveness, but then I turn around, and I find out something else that Penny has done, and I hate her all over again. ”
Sterling gave a half snort as he nodded, knowing all too well what that felt like.
“She needs the comeuppance that only you can give her, son,” Grandpa said.
“I’m not here to give her a comeuppance,” Sterling clarified. “I’m just here to get my home.”
“And that would do it,” he said. “That will absolutely do it.”
“And how much has she done in terms of improvements to the property?”
He snorted at that. “Nothing. Anything that was done was paid for by me. Anything she ever tried just didn’t seem to work out, did it?” He turned to Chelsea.
Chelsea nodded. “I don’t know what she thought she was doing with all her bright ideas, but I can tell you that more often than not her projects ended up being complete disasters. It didn’t seem to matter what she did. It’s as if the world was against her.”
“Maybe it was,” Lindsey interjected, startling Sterling as he looked over at her. “I just want to think that there’s justice in this world.”
Sterling smiled. “Back to that Pollyanna attitude again?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I just think that things have a way of working out the way they should.”
Chelsea smiled and nodded. “If for no other reason, I want to thank you for putting me in contact with my cousin,” she said, as she reached out a hand toward Lindsey.
Lindsey squeezed her fingers and nodded. “Hey, I couldn’t believe it when I realized the resemblance. I’ve only known Sterling for a little while myself,” she said, with a smile.
“That’s okay,” Sterling added. “You’ll get to know me a whole lot better.”
She flushed at that, and his granddad laughed.
“Now that’s good to see,” he declared. “And I really do hope you won’t hold this against me,” he repeated, his voice quivering as he asked.
“No, I won’t hold it against you,” Sterling stated.
“Sometimes things are just way too much, and you feel as if you can’t handle it all.
Then something comes along that needs your attention, and you realize that it doesn’t matter, that you don’t have a choice, that this is your situation, and that you must do the best you can with the situation you’re in.
” He looked around at the home and asked, “Granddad, are you comfortable enough here?”
“Aside from the railroad job that landed me here, I am comfortable here,” he replied. “She doesn’t come to see me, and honestly that’s a blessing.”
Sterling frowned. “I’m sorry. That’s a hard thing, considering she’s your daughter.”
“It is, but she has done horrible things and continues to this day. At this point, I have no illusions about her. And that boyfriend of hers has a pretty sweet deal and is taking full advantage of it.”
“Right, that seems to have added a negative element,” Sterling muttered.
“There are some new roads in the area, and a couple go by the property now,” Grandpa shared with Sterling. “It makes it faster to get to the farm, depending on where you’re coming from, but you should probably take a look.”
Sterling exhaled. “Honestly, I don’t know if I want to yet,” he shared. “Whenever I do go up there, it’ll likely end up in one hell of a fight.”
“Maybe so, but your name is on the title,” he reminded him.
“True,” Lindsey interjected. “However, we know that Penny’s likely to say something about squatters’ rights or that she didn’t know Sterling was alive, that she’s put all kinds of money into improvements, and who knows what else,” Lindsey suggested.
“Oh, she knew,” Granddad muttered.
“If you can get me in touch with the lawyer you used, I would appreciate it,” Sterling said.
“Of course, and I’ll let them know about the ripping fight Penny and I had about it,” he added. “I may even have a few emails and texts that she sent me when she was still pretty livid about it all.”
“I could use anything you’ve got, but I’m sorry it’ll end up being you against her.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “Yet she pitted herself against me when she sent away her sister’s child away and lied to me about it. She’s brought this fight on herself.”
Sterling added, “Please tell me that she had nothing to do with the car accident that took out my mother.”
The old man stared at him in shock. “Good God.”
“Sorry, it’s just one of the questions that has always haunted me.”
“As far as I know, she had nothing to do with it, but, Jesus, that’s a hell of a thought, isn’t it?”
“Not one to dwell on if we don’t need to.”
“You brought it up, so now I’ll have to give it some thought,” he muttered, with a frown. “Could Penny really be that evil?”
“I hope not,” Chelsea muttered. “That’s also my mother we’re talking about.”
Sterling nodded. “That’s why I’m bringing it up, so nothing goes unsaid, and maybe we can close it down as being a nonissue.” He faced his granddad. “Do you think it’s a nonissue?”
“Christ, I hope so,” he muttered. “That’s not anything I really want to contemplate.”
“Was there any jealousy between the sisters? Any confrontations?” Sterling asked.
Grandpa laughed. “Absolutely—all the time when they were younger—but that’s a far cry from killing somebody,” he said, “and Penny didn’t even live around here. Life must not have been kind to you if that is what you’re thinking.”
“Life was not kind to me,” Sterling confirmed. “So, you can take that out of your thought process.”
His grandfather flushed and shook his head sadly. “I am so sorry. That is not what I wanted for you. If I’d had any idea that was going on, I would have put a stop to it at once. I would have stepped up and taken you in.”
“The fact that she even hid you from each other is unbelievable,” Lindsey interjected, as she stood up and paced around the room. “It says an awful lot about Penny’s mind-set.”
Sterling nodded. “Sure, but look what she inherited from telling those lies.”
“Took, you mean,” Lindsey clarified.
“And what about the bank accounts?” Sterling asked Grandpa.
His granddad shook his head and said, “Penny and her freeloading boyfriend have no money, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Sterling stared at him and asked, “And the bank accounts in my mother’s name, what happened to those?”
Surprised, Granddad raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t know what happened to those. However, I remember something about banks reporting to the federal government any unclaimed funds after a certain amount of years.
Somehow we can search public records for them.
You should ask the lawyers, yours or mine or both to confirm. ”
“I don’t know how that’ll work if I don’t have a copy of the will.”
“But I do have a copy of the will,” he shared, frowning for a moment.
Then he slowly wheeled over to the night table and pulled an envelope from the bottom drawer.
He explained, “When I found out you were still alive, I dug this up, and that was part of the huge fight Penny and I had. Everything in your mother’s estate was to go to you, which only made sense because you were her only child and the one person she absolutely loved to the exclusion of all else,” he explained.
“And, yes, I understood. As a single mom to you, with you so young, she solely focused on you. After all, I could take care of myself.”
Sterling nodded. “I can see how her maternal instincts kicked in to protect me. I only have good memories of my mother,” he shared, “so I am working hard to keep those intact.”
“Of course you are,” Grandpa agreed.
“I guess my other question would be, … well, it’ll be a tough one.”
“Go ahead, son. Let it fly,” his grandfather stated. “You have a right to ask questions, hard or not.”
“Yeah, well, some of the questions I have aren’t terribly nice.”
“No, I don’t imagine they are,” he noted, “but I’ll do my best to answer them if I can.” Then he handed over the will, adding, “As far as I know, absolutely everything is yours.”
Sterling took the document. “And yet Penny didn’t have this, and the property was in trust. Yet, according to her, she was looking after you. Everything went along as things do in small towns. She moved right in, and nobody cared. No paperwork was filed, and she paid the taxes year after year.”
Then Grandpa interrupted, “No, I paid the taxes year after year. That was one of the things she always came to me for, the property taxes. Then, when I refused to give her any more money, I ended up here,” he said, with a headshake.
“I don’t know how she pulled that off, unless she told the retirement home to debit my own account.
Regardless, it serves me right for not standing up to her. ”
Sterling could hardly believe everything Grandpa told him. It seemed too preposterous. Yet Sterling got placed in a foster home by Aunt Penny, just like she placed Grandpa in a retirement home. From the expressions on Chelsea’s and Lindsey’s faces, they thought the old boy was telling the truth.
“So, this hard question of yours, what is it?” Grandpa repeated.
Sterling paused. “I guess I’m just wondering how much of this turned out to be convenient for you.”
Grandpa stiffened his shoulders, then slowly relaxed.
“I guess that’s a fair-enough question. I was getting older, as we all do, but I was still fully capable of taking you on full-time.
After all, when you were eight, I wasn’t even fifty yet.
Yet I swear I didn’t know Penny was up to that.
I had no idea that you were alive or that she had sent you away, and that’s the God’s honest truth of it.
I can’t do anything other than tell you that and hope you will give me some grace and will believe me,” he noted.
Both Lindsey and Chelsea had been shocked and possibly offended by his question, but Sterling had to know.
He studied the old man intently for a long moment.
Grandpa probably needed some connection to family, after losing both his grandson and one of his daughters.
Sterling nodded and asked, “I guess the question now is, where do I go from here?”
“You already know where you need to go, son,” Grandpa declared. “I’m just sorry it’ll be such a fight.”
“It might be a fight and might not,” Sterling muttered. “I still have to get my ducks in a row with the lawyers and all. So, if you have any other paperwork or documentation, I would appreciate it.”
Grandpa winced. “I don’t know if I can dredge up much in the way of paperwork,” he began.
“Sometimes you don’t think it’s important until it’s too late.
However, … I emailed a bunch to myself, and it hasn’t been that many years ago,” he noted.
“I don’t check my emails these days because I don’t get any nowadays. ”
At that Sterling stopped and said, “Good God, I didn’t even consider that.”
“What?” Lindsey asked.
“My mother’s emails. I had access to her email account way back when. She used to email stuff to herself as well,” he said, with a headshake. “How is it that I’ve never even thought of that?”
Lindsey moved to where he could see her.
“For one, you were only eight, and you weren’t thinking until recently that this was even something you needed to check up on.
Now we have a bunch of missing documentation to come up with, and that revelation could very well make this fight for the farm a little bit easier. ”
He let out his breath with a hard sigh, then nodded. He turned to his granddad and asked, “When we leave, will you tell Penny that we were here?”
“No, I won’t tell her anything. The last time she came here, she created quite a stink and said, If I didn’t give her more money, she would arrange to have me put out on the street.
I didn’t sleep for a very long time, afraid that she might try it.
So don’t worry. I won’t be calling her anytime soon,” he stated.
Grandpa continued. “And I get why you’re saying that, and I can see you still have some doubts, still have some disbelief.
The only thing I can do is spend as much time as I can with you and Chelsea, if you will allow me,” he added, “and try to convince you that I’m really not the bad guy in this.
” Looking profoundly sad, he went on. “What I am is just another victim, like you and Chelsea here.”
Chelsea stared at him and asked, “How much do you even know about that?”
“Oh, your mother gave me quite an earful about how you refused to give her your student loan money so that she could pay the bills. I told her that she was just greedy and that your student loan was exactly that, yours, a loan specifically for attending college. I added that you needed that degree so you would have a future, and, just because Penny didn’t have a future, didn’t mean that you weren’t deserving of one. ”
“Oh, ouch.” Chelsea stared at him in fascination. “I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No, it didn’t go over well at all,” he said, with a smile.
“But what can I say? Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.
At that point she decided I would end up on the streets if I didn’t give her more money.
” He looked over at Sterling. “Sorry, son, but you’ll have to be the hard-ass here and make some tough decisions. ”
“Good enough,” Sterling declared. “I can do that.”