ENEMIES(37)

“Seventy-five percent of it.”

I sucked in my breath.

I had no idea they owed that much on it.

Stone gazed at me. “You want the house?”

The lawyer straightened. “Mr. Reeves, I don’t know…”

“No.” I was thinking, concussion be damned. “If you take the house back, what do they still owe?”

He hesitated again, the second time acting like a human. “They still owe us a hundred thousand. They took out a second loan to pay for some items for her son, I believe.” His mouth pressed in before he said, “There’s no money for you. There was a small amount they set aside for Jared, a fund that Gail had separate. His father’s not in the picture, correct?”

I nodded. “Uh. Yeah. She never talked about him. I don’t think he had parental rights to him. But I wasn’t around that often. I was at college, then I moved here. Jared never mentioned him either. It was a secret. I guess. I never thought to wonder about it.”

He frowned, pulling out some papers from his briefcase. “Paternal rights were taken away when Jared was two. There was a domestic abuse issue.”

Jesus. My chest stopped working for a moment.

Two? What happened to my stepbrother and Gail?

I whispered, “Two years old?”

“Hmmm, yes.” He put the papers back. “The file’s closed. I don’t believe Jared even knows what happened, but in my career, if rights were taken away at that age, it’s with good reason.”

I needed to call Jared. I’d been putting it off for too long.

“So.” He read through the last of his papers and handed me the last one, along with a pen. “As for your father’s personal effects. They’ve been put in a storage facility and I have the key for you. Mr. Reeves has said you’ve been ill yourself. The storage’s been rented out for the next three months. Once those months are done, you’ll have to take over the payments, or his effects will be sold. All rights revert back to the storage owners.”

He reached into his pocket, pulling out a key on a keychain, and slid it over the table to me.

Stone took the key, asking, “You have their business card?”

“Oh, yes. Here it is.”

Stone took that, as well, standing up from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

I already knew what he was doing. He was taking over payment after the ninety-days were up, but once I was better, I was traveling there and going through everything. I’d have to do it over a weekend because no matter what, I wasn’t missing out on any more college classes.

“If you can sign here, Miss Phillips?” He pointed to the bottom of the paper. “This just says that I’ve gone over the last will and testament of your father.” As I signed, he stood and collected the rest of his stuff, putting it into his briefcase. “I truly am sorry that we met under these circumstances. Your father spoke very highly of you the few times I met him. I looked up to him as a man, and as the kind of father I’d like to be one day.”

The words sounded nice, but after signing, he almost bolted for the door.

“What a dick.” Came from the side.

I grinned but looked down. It was all so neat and tidy. He’d left me a copy of everything and told me the extent of my father’s belongings were in a storage shelter.

“I took care of the payments, and what was still owed. I’ll set up everything tomorrow.”

I had nothing to even fight him on that. A hundred thousand was too much, and I knew that it would take me probably my entire life to pay him back. But I would. I would.

“Thank you.”

Stone didn’t respond, and I was grateful.

I could hear my mom’s laughter. It was faint, but I heard it and I was back there. “She liked to twirl sometimes.” I looked up. “When she was baking with us. She’d wear that yellow apron, especially when she was making something for you. I don’t have those memories of him.” Those memories were the hard ones. “We survived together after she died. We were roommates in that apartment. I went to school and worked. He worked. We just survived side by side. Then he met Gail three months after we buried Mom, and he was with Gail after that.”

Then I graduated. Then I went to community college, but I had to take time to work before starting classes.

There were other memories. Had to be. “I don’t have those same memories of him. He taught me to ride a bike. And throw a baseball.”

Stone said, “I taught you to throw a baseball.”

“Oh.” That was right. “Yeah. He went fishing with me—”

“I took you fishing. I hated the worms, remember? You didn’t care. You hooked the bait for us.”

Another memory I got wrong. I flashed him a smile, feeling the back of my neck heating up. “My concussion. Fucks with the head.”

He grunted. “That’s the definition of a concussion.” Checking his phone, he looked up. “I should head in. You ready to go?”

Change of subject. Thank God. Someone else might’ve done it to save me from the embarrassment of remembering how little I had with my father, but I could tell with Stone, he was done with the conversation. Sometimes he was thoughtful. This giving side was a throwback to our childhood, to the friend I used to remember, but right now, knowing he truly wanted to get going, this was the newer Stone. And his change of subject had nothing to do with me and was completely all about him.