Janice Carter - The Inheritance

He nodded vigorously. “I don’t think Ida’s changed anything in the house—except for some wiring and the plumbing—since she inherited it from her folks. A lot of people don’t like older things—too big and too dark.”

Roslyn thought of her condo with its airy white-upholstered furniture and minimalist design. “Hmm,” she murmured. “There must be a good market somewhere for all those antiques.” The devilish side of her relished the horror that crossed his face.

“I—I suppose,” he sputtered, waving the baseball cap back and forth again. “But it would take a pretty callous person to—to just sell off their inheritance.”

“I don’t think I’d use exactly that word. Unsentimental, perhaps.” She smiled, turned around and walked up to the top of the veranda.

“Besides,” he raised his voice, “the terms of the will don’t allow for that. You have to live here for a year before you legally own everything.”

He is after the place! In spite of all his assurances and efforts to get me to like it, he really wants it for himself.

Roslyn pivoted around. “But I bet a smart Chicago lawyer could chew up that will and spit it out.”

Jack’s face flushed. He spoke quietly, clutching the baseball cap tightly at his side. “I guess so.” The cap in his right hand came up and aimed directly at Roslyn. “But I bet,” he said, his voice low and even, “that a year of living in this house in this town would guarantee you’d never want to part with a thing.” He turned on his heel and walked away, heading for the driveway at the side of the house.

Roslyn watched him disappear around the corner. She’d gone too far, she realized. And why, when she already knew she wasn’t going to take the house? Why hadn’t she simply responded to him with the calm courtesy she’d have used for any stranger? Instead, she’d egged him on, engaging him in some adolescent teasing reminiscent of a high school crush. And in spite of his compelling good looks, there was no way she could possibly be attracted to someone she’d known only two hours.

Still, when she heard the rumble of Jack’s truck starting up, Roslyn had to force herself not to look back before stepping inside Ida Mae Petersen’s house.

JACK REVERSED the truck right up to the end of the drive before he remembered he didn’t have Lenny with him. Fortunately—meaning, he didn’t have to go back into the house and risk seeing Roslyn again—his nephew had heard the engine and was now running down the drive, waving frantically.

Lenny clambered into the passenger side. “Thought you were leaving without me,” he gasped.

Jack roared out onto the street, shifted in an unusually jerky movement, and squealed north on Union Street toward the center of town.

“So…what’s up?”

Jack looked across at Lenny. “What do you mean?”

Lenny shrugged. “I don’t know. How come you’re heading back into town? Aren’t we going to the farm?”

“Thought I’d stop in at the post office—see if my catalogues came in.”

Lenny nodded, staring silently through the windshield. After a moment, he asked, “So, do you think she’s going to take it?”

“She?”

“You know…Roslyn. Isn’t that her name?”

“How the hell would I know?”

The air in the cab chilled a few degrees. Jack saw the confusion in his nephew’s face and regretted his outburst. “I don’t really know, frankly,” he added. “Guess she’ll take a few days to see the place and make up her mind.”

“Sophie and me figure she won’t. She’s too young to want to settle in Plainsville.”

Jack grinned. “Spoken like a true patriot son,” he commented.

“Well, you know. Plainsville is for the older generation.”

“Like mine?”

“Geez, Uncle Jack, you know I don’t think you’re old,” Lenny protested. “You’re six years younger than my Dad.”

“Who’s already an old geezer of…what? Forty-one?”

“Yeah.”

Jack waited in vain for Lenny to respond to the gibe. Finally, he said, “I’ve no idea how old Roslyn Baines is, but I do know that she must be one heck of a smart businesswoman to get where she is at that investment place in Chicago.”

“Too right!” Lenny exclaimed. “And she wouldn’t want to give it all up to move to boring old Plainsville is what I’m saying.”

“Maybe so, but you never can tell.”

“You can’t believe that!”

“She’s Ida Mae’s niece. Great-niece,” he corrected himself. “She’ll want to keep the house in the family.”

Lenny snorted. “Family! Geez, what family? Ida Mae never had anything to do with any family. The only real friend she had was great-grandpa Henry.”

“Who knows, Lenny? We don’t know everything about the Petersens and almost nothing about Miss Baines. There’s no point in second-guessing what she’ll do about the house.”

Lenny frowned in disbelief. “You act as if you don’t care what she decides. As if you almost hope she’ll move in.”

Jack felt a rush of warmth flow up into his face. He stared straight ahead, avoiding the suspicion in his nephew’s face. Of course, he didn’t want Roslyn to move in, but he’d hate himself if she turned down the house because of any kind of pressure from him. Ida Mae would have expected more of Jack. No. If the inheritance did fall to him, he wanted no inner qualms about taking it.

“IS THERE anything you’d like, Miss Baines?”

Sophie Warshawski was standing, dish towel in hand, in the archway between the living room and the hall.

Roslyn spun around from the fireplace, where she’d been examining a row of knickknacks on the mantel. “Please,” she said, “call me Roslyn.”

Sophie nodded, but said nothing in reply.

Roslyn felt as if she’d been caught shoplifting. “I was just looking at some of my aunt’s things.” Her glance circled the room. “She saved a lot over the years.”

Sophie nodded indifferently. “Most of this stuff is from long ago, when Miss Ida Mae was still a young girl. Far as I know, she never left Plainsville except to shop occasionally in Des Moines.”

Roslyn couldn’t imagine a young woman spending her whole life in a town as small as Plainsville. “She never went anywhere? Not even to college?”

“Nope. Old Mister Petersen apparently didn’t take with educating women, especially if they had plenty of money and wouldn’t want for anything.”

“We’re lucky that kind of thinking’s gone the way of the dinosaur.”

“Maybe. Still, an expensive education is no guarantee of happiness, is it?”

Roslyn refused to let the tone in Sophie’s voice intimidate her. “You know, Sophie, I’m completely mystified by all of this.”

Sophie’s eyebrows furled together. “How do you mean?”

Roslyn gestured into the room. “First of all, I never knew my grandmother even had a sister. I’d always thought she was an only child, like my own mother and like me. So I can’t understand why no one ever told me anything about the Petersen family. Then, to have this great-aunt leave me her house…” Roslyn gave up and turned back to the mantel. After a moment she said, “Please show me around the house. And whatever you can tell me about my aunt…well, I’d appreciate it very much.”

Sophie flipped the dish towel toward the hall. “We’ll start with the kitchen,” she said, “’cause that’s where I spent most of my time when I worked for your aunt.”

The smile she flashed was quick and tight, but somehow reassuring. Roslyn followed the housekeeper along the corridor and into the kitchen.

“Got a notepad?” Sophie asked when she reached the kitchen counter.

“What do you mean?”