4. The Attorney
The Attorney
Melody
“This is all your fault.” I stared at Luke’s photograph on the mantle. The one of him holding a medium-sized fish by his side with a broad smile and his red “Spiro Grant for President” hat tilted back on his head, crystal-blue eyes as shiny as the wet scales on his latest kill.
I stood, walking across the creaky floorboards where the floor had started sinking from too much foot traffic, and laid my hand on the white mantle.
“I’m glad I murdered you.”
He couldn’t hear me. He was dead. And I was glad.
“You can’t hurt me anymore. And you’ll never hurt Miriam.”
He’d dangled it in front of me like a baited hook. He’d said if I were gone, he’d need someone. Someone like her. Her, who looked like me. And I looked like my mother. The woman he’d loved.
“How can you claim to love someone, then hurt her children?”
I pulled my hands away, looking down at the dust on my fingertips.
I hadn’t cleaned this in a while. I hadn’t dared look at the mantle too closely, in case I fell apart staring into the eyes of a mother who’d have been so hurt and disappointed at how her family broke under that man’s care.
How she had loved him. How he had loved her.
How he’d turned that love to her child.
I tilted that photo down. But not the one he shared with me and Mom on their wedding day.
Or the one of him holding Marcus during our first holiday.
Not the one with toddler Marcus on his lap and baby Miriam in Mom’s arms. Not the family photos that came after, with our smiling faces on vacations, when things hadn’t been fucked up.
“I wish I could have stabbed you in the guts, stripped you naked, and left you hanging by your balls in the middle of the woods, howling at the moon like a lunatic, you sick fuck.”
I almost giggled at the image of his pain.
“You got off too easy.” Drunk on his favorite whiskey and relaxed on too much Flexeril. My send-off was designed to look like an accident. He deserved so much worse. “But life’s not fair, is it?”
As if on cue, my phone rang. It vibrated and danced across the table. Local number. No caller ID. But still familiar…because this was not the first parent I’d lost.
“Hello?” I said as I brought it to my ear.
“Miss Melody Gray. You might remember me, ma’am, I’m Rhodes LeRoy. Your family’s attorney.” His voice was smooth, slow, and almost lazy. Not what I expected from a lawyer.
“I thought our attorney was Regis LeRoy.”
“Ah yes, my father. I’ve taken over the family business since his untimely passing.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” He let out an awkward laugh. He sounded young. Certainly not a man in his fifties like Regis had been. “A lot of that going around, eh?”
I froze, realizing Luke’s body being found was, indeed, the only reason he would call. Regis was an estate attorney, not a prosecutor. I didn’t need to lawyer up quite yet.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Funnier in my head than it was out loud.”
I’ll say…
“Listen, I’m the executor of his will, and your mother’s as well, in fact. Now that he’s confirmed dead, or…you know, very soon will be, I’m going to begin dispersing the funds and trusts per their last will and testament. So…” I heard shuffling of paper on the other side of the phone. “Anyway…hm…”
I waited. Perhaps I had idealized lawyers too much.
I’d applied to law school at the end of my undergrad, and in my head, lawyers were all quick-witted, pedantic, and aggressive.
That was who my classmates had been in my first year into my JD at Yale, before I dropped out to take care of Marc and Miriam.
This guy didn’t seem like he’d answer fast enough to pass the New York State Bar.
“Da-da-da,” he sang as the shuffling continued.
“Would you like to call back?” I snapped.
“What? Oh! No. Here it is,” he said with a little laugh. “You’re my last call today about this matter. I’d rather just get it over with, if you don’t mind.”
This guy had the emotional awareness of a flesh eating parasite.
“Here it is!” he chirped. “Okay, so the trust was split into three parts. One for you and the other two for your siblings, of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed, frustrated at his lack of awareness in talking to a supposedly grieving daughter.
I didn’t think he was being mean. He just seemed thoughtless.
“Anywho,” he continued. “You will receive Marcus’s trust until he reaches the age of majority. Ditto for Miriam’s. Then you’ll stop receiving them, and they will be dispersed into an account under their control, at their discretion, on their eighteenth birthdays.”
“How…How much is it?” I felt like he was burying the lead on this.
“Dobi-dobi-doo,” he sang, no doubt scanning the paper.
I was certain his singing was an unconscious tic he didn’t even know he had. It wasn’t meant to irritate the ever-loving fuck out of me. But it did.
“Oh! There it is. So, the trust comes out to about $50,000 annually for all three of you, it seems. Yeah. That’s right. So, fifty each, and…dobi-doo…Oh yeah, here it is. It comes from an investment fund. Pretty substantial certificates of deposits and investments. Nice!” he said. “Anywho…”
Anywho what…?
“How much are the CD’s worth?” I had never heard of Luke having these investments.
I knew he came from money, but I also knew it was not enough to provide for all three of us.
But it made sense. Luke never worked. Not really. He went to Graystone Manor to race horses, but it had always struck me as more of a hobby than anything else. A reason to get dressed up, hit the tracks, and show off their prestige in a sport with a financial barrier for entry.
It must have been why he had the time to fixate about me.
I saw it when Mom died. The way his fixation began.
I was twelve. Too young, but still old enough to know those looks weren’t from the devotion of a father.
The way he put his hand on my neck and around my waist, the way he made me sit on his lap…
It was one small thing after another that I’d excused.
He was affectionate. We were all he had.
I was the one who looked most like my mother.
He was just coping.
It was my job to help him. Because we were family.
Maybe if he’d had something else. A job, perhaps? A family that wasn’t as fixated on their influence and reputation. A hobby.
The way things cracked slowly, breaking bit by bit until it was in ruins.
It was like this farm house.
Since I took it over and the deed was put in my name, it slowly deteriorated.
A crack here, a little bit of rust on the metal soffit there.
A nail that held the drain pipe suddenly giving way, or the scrap of jackets and people on walls, scuffing the paint.
One small thing after another that wasn’t fixed or corrected, each slowly turning a home into a dump until I had a rotting front porch, a weed-riddled orchard in the backyard, and a fence with a collapsed section because of a deer that didn’t quite clear it while trying to jump into my vegetable patch.
It ate all my damn spinach. The wild grapes, and the apple orchard were a mess, overgrown, un-mowed.
It wouldn’t be long before it got swallowed up completely.
We had cows. I was relying on a fourteen year old to keep them fed, milked, and taken care of. I hated myself for that. I hated making Miriam work because I hadn’t figured out if I’d just sell them and be done with it, or actually try to make some money off of the farmland.
Everything had been a slow decay, and I had let it happen.
“Miss? You still there?” Rhodes LeRoy’s voice pulled me out of my dismal, spiraling thoughts.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“The CD is worth—oh, wow! Several million. Though what I have is outdated, and the accountant will have more accurate information. Would you like that information sent to you?”
I looked at the molding on the ceiling where a water stain spread through the corner. Was it from rain, or from a leaky pipe? Maybe even a clog? I didn’t know. I didn’t even have time to handle it.
“Please, send it.” I turned to the mantle where Luke’s face stared back at me.
It wasn’t blood money, but it felt just as tainted.
Marcus could go to college in two years and start his own life. Maybe go to vocational school. But Miriam was only fourteen. Miriam would have four more years here, and she deserved to live in a good house. That was what our mother would have wanted for her.
It was what I wanted for her, too.
“Oh, and…Oh, shit. Sorry. I’m going through my father’s notes. Looks like I just got an email from someone. Oh!” He hummed for a minute, and I heard him typing. “Well, it looks like we’ll have to put a hold on it.”
“What?” I almost shot to my feet with indignation. “Why?”
“Uhm, it looks like his parents and siblings are already contesting the will. Oh.”
“What?!” I almost screamed.
I didn’t know about that money two minutes ago, but now that I knew, I had already mentally spent it.
New siding, a new porch. Maybe a new roof?
Miriam probably deserved a new mattress, and maybe I would redo the master suite.
So I wouldn’t see him in everything, and maybe then I would even use it, rather than keeping it as a relic to a man who haunted my nightmares.
“We’ll have to hold it until it’s resolved, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
“You don’t think it’ll be a problem?” I was…What was I? Incredulous? Flummoxed? I was incensed.
The first bit of good news in almost a year, and Rhodes had yanked it out from under me as soon as he’d delivered it.
Fuck you, Rhodes LeRoy!
“Well, it’s not like you did anything to kill him, right?” He laughed awkwardly. “Once we rule out foul play as the cause of death, we’ll be good.”
I fucking hate you, Rhodes. So much.
“I mean, it’s not like you killed him, right?” he repeated.
I swallowed, the growing lump in my throat ready to choke me. That damn fucking picture on the fucking mantle looked at me, his smug face smiling more than it had just moments ago. An asshole in life and in death.
“Right.”
“Anyway, it won’t be long, I’m sure. Just as soon as the sheriff gives us her report, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I repeated. “I guess.”
“Anyway, chat soon! Also, congrats on your new fortune, and uhm…I’m…sorry for your loss?” He lifted his voice at the end like it was a question.
It wasn’t a loss for me. But it was for Miriam and Marcus.
“Thanks. Chat…soon?” I wasn’t sure what to say to this man.
What kind of Dougie Howser lawyer was he?
When we hung up, I was left with that paranoid feeling in my chest and a burn on my skin. It felt like someone watched my every move, spying through the windows and doors. Like someone tracked my movements and waited for me to slip up.
My phone chirped to notify me of a text message, as if it was ready to confirm my worst fears.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you, or you’ll end up just like your father.
I wished I could say that I knew who this was, but my extended stepfamily was a malicious group. The Grays. My stepdad’s family. The people everyone in this town was related to, somehow. And every single one of the seemed to hate me.
If I listed all the people who would send me anonymous threats, I would likely name a dozen in this county alone. Even more if we included out-of-state members.
When a mighty house crumbled, everyone was in danger of getting buried alive.
They used punctuation, though. So that certainly narrowed it down.