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1
Shane
In all the years I’ve been a leading man, I’ve never actually felt like I was in a movie…but there’s a first time for everything.
Also, I’m clearly not the star of the show here. That role goes to Weggers, our grandfather’s attorney—a short, balding guy with the general aura of a kids’ movie villain. He takes his job extremely seriously. He stands behind me, offering me a sheet of thick, creamy paper with as much flourish as the server at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
I wish it were a menu of anything other than my doom.
“Please read it aloud,” Weggers instructs.
I glance around the conference room at my family members. They all meet my gaze, except my sister, Hanna, who is frowning at the table like it canceled her favorite streaming service. My brothers mostly look amused and slightly sympathetic—plus relieved that they’re not in the hot seat. Quinn has been here before and gives me an eyebrows-up cocky grin, like, How’s it feel now, asshole?
Not so hot, I’ll be the first to admit.
“Shane,” Weggers prompts.
I squirm in my uncomfortable cheap-office-furniture seat but obey. “‘Famous is as famous does, Shane Hott,’” I read, wincing.
Not that I actually thought my grandfather would go easy on me. But I guess I’d hoped he’d singled out our brother Quinn for the worst treatment. Quinn recently had to read a similar letter out loud. It instructed him to spend two months sitting at a spa reception desk, which is a fate worse than death for a guy whose people skills include grunting and frowning.
I guess I was just hoping that all the rest of our letters would say…I don’t know, maybe, Just kidding! You don’t actually have to jump through any hoops to save Hanna’s land!
Nope.
Weggers signals an impatient Continue, and I read: “‘Hott Springs Eternal has done a good job at putting itself on the local map, but to attain the kind of success Hanna and I envisioned?—’”
My sister howls with rage.
“This is not my idea!” she cries. “I told him to leave you guys alone! I said he was going to piss you off! I said he had to get over the fact that you were your own people and needed to do your own things!”
My brother Preston—wearing a suit that’s straight out of central casting for “finance guy”—puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Han. Nobody thinks this is your doing. You’re not devious enough for this kind of bullshit.”
Hanna crosses her arms and sulks. I’m not sure if it’s because my grandfather threw her under the bus or because she’s pissed we don’t think she’s devious.
“Please keep the interruptions to a minimum,” Weggers intones.
If you wrote this guy into a movie, no one would believe it. They’d shut the TV off in the middle of episode two and write a scathing Screenflix review about how unfair it is that everyone hates on lawyers.
I know plenty of good lawyers and plenty of bad ones, but this guy carves out a whole new territory for himself. He would be the comic relief—except there’s nothing funny about my grandfather’s will.
The will leaves the ranch land we grew up on to my brothers, Hanna, and me.
Sort of.
What it actually says is that we have to hold our grandfather’s ranch land in Rush Creek without selling it for two years, during which time we must obey any instructions our grandfather has issued. These instructions come on our grandfather’s time line and in a form specified by him. Namely, letters on expensive paper delivered in Weggers’s conference room, around a heavy, over-polished table, surrounded by books no one has read since Weggers graduated from law school in the Jurassic period.
If, and only if, we follow all those instructions, we keep the land and it won’t pass to Blue Iron Mining and be stripped of its mercury and other heavy metals.
If, and only if, we follow each and every last whim of my dickwad grandfather, my sister will get to keep her birthright and the amazing wedding business she runs on the land.
“Carry on, Shane,” Weggers says, waving his hand like I’m the hired help.
I bury the impulse to off him with one of his oversized law books and read:
To attain the kind of success Hanna and I envisioned, Hott Springs Eternal will need a wedding that garners national, or even international, attention.
A celebrity wedding.
