Blake approached his mom and hugged her. “Don’t let this bug you, Mom. I don’t think there’s a will out there. When no will was found, Mary would have had an attorney appoint her as executor. I would guess the attorney would have done at least a cursory search for a will.”
Paradise didn’t want to upset Jenna by contradicting Blake,but Mary might have told the attorney they didn’t have a will. A lot of people didn’t. She couldn’t see an attorney doing an extensive search for a missing will if the spouse said there was none.
Jenna’s chest heaved a sigh. “I’ve been praying about this, Blake, and I think we have to search for the will ourselves. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Jenna, that’s crazy!” Paradise waved her hand around the cute cottage Jenna had infused with so much warmth. “Even if there is a will, Dean killed his own uncle.”
“We don’t know that.” Jenna pulled a chair out from the table and sank into it as if her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer. “These are just things. If we try not to face the truth, it will hang over our heads forever. We’ll always wonder what the right thing to do was. We have to keep our hearts pure.”
Blake dropped into a chair and put his head in his hands. “Mom’s right. I’ve been struggling with it too—that’s why I’ve been so desperate to find out if Dean killed Allen. If he’s a murderer, the law is clear on what happens next. He’s not allowed to benefit from the will, and he’ll go to jail.”
“But what about Mary? She’d have to pay back the purchase price, and I don’t think she has the money.”
“She could make payments.” Jenna sighed and rubbed her forehead. “If a judge believes I wasn’t to blame in some way. That’s for the law to figure out though. Our job is to do what’s right in God’s eyes, not our eyes.”
“But that’s so hard,” Paradise burst out. “What about real justice?”
“God’s in charge of that detail.” Blake straightened and pulled Paradise down on his lap. “We have to take it one step at a time and see where things lead. Believe me, I’m praying we can prove Dean killed Allen, but we also need to take the next step to walkingour own straight path and not let our desire to have our own way lead us along a crooked path.”
This was all over Paradise’s head. There was so much about the faith walk she didn’t understand yet, but if God took everything from these people she loved, she wasn’t sure she could live with it.
Jenna smiled at them snuggled together. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone and go read.”
The man she loved exuded strength in so many ways—not just his muscular build. Paradise leaned her face against Blake’s and realized she could do something about this. “I don’t want to wait any longer, Blake. Let’s get married right away. I don’t need a big wedding. We can get a marriage license and have a simple wedding at the church with your family.”
She felt his surprise radiate through his sinews and muscles, tightening along the length of his form where she sat pressed against him. Her enthusiasm for the idea amped up a notch. “I have the apartment, and we can squeeze everyone in. I can redo the second bedroom for your mom and the boys. There’s enough room to put in a bunk bed and another bed.”
He palmed her face and stared into her eyes for a long moment. The joy in his expression gradually morphed into disappointment. “I see what you’re doing, babe. You think we’re going to lose everything, and you want us to have a place to stay, don’t you?”
His hands came down on her shoulders, and he gently slid her off his lap to rise and pace the living room. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but this isn’t how I want our life together to start.” He swept his hand around the living room. “It’s hard enough getting alone time with you here. With us all crammed into your apartment, what kind of beginning to a marriage would that be?”
He was turning her down? The shock left her speechless.
Chapter 30
Blake and Paradise stood at the edge of the pond with the visitors who had disembarked on the safari truck. The group was from a local middle school. Bertha had noticed them, and the hippo’s eyes and nostrils were the only part of her visible above the water. Blake glanced around to make sure everyone had crowded close for Paradise’s lecture. She was in her element when talking about animals.
He still couldn’t believe her marriage proposal last night, but he didn’t want to start a new life with all of them packed into her tiny apartment. He didn’t want her pity.
Paradise turned toward the group with a smile. “You might wonder why there’s a strong fence between us. Bertha is a very friendly hippo and would never hurt someone on purpose—at least we’ve never seen any sign of aggression from her—but hippos are the second-largest land mammal in the world. Only elephants are larger. Bertha’s bite is three times the strength of a lion’s, and her teeth are formidable. You don’t want to get a nibble from her. Hippos are social creatures, but Bertha has been here by herself. We recently learned we will be receiving a malehippo in a few weeks, and we think Bertha will be happy with the addition. A group of hippos is called a bloat or a pod. Or sometimes just a herd, but I like the other terms better.”
A teenage boy at the front of the group waved his hand. “Does she live in the water all the time?”
“Hippos have no sweat glands, so they have to be in the water quite a lot,” a girl next to him said. “Right?”
“That’s right. And they can hold their breath for five minutes. They often sleep underwater—we call that rafting. She’ll often do that with her nostrils sticking above the water’s surface.”
Blake let them ooh and aah over Bertha and walked away to check his phone. Hez was supposed to call with an update on his research into the probate case surrounding the Steerforth property.Call mewas in a text from his cousin. Blake held up his phone to Paradise, who nodded that she’d keep the group together. He returned Hez’s call.
“Hey, that was fast,” Hez said. “I’ll be brief since I know you’re working. Dean contested the probate, but he had no evidence other than his own word. Mary claimed she’d looked for the will and couldn’t find it. In a deposition, she said the only person who claimed Allen had made a will was Dean. She’d signed Allen’s truck over to Dean before he contested the probate, and they had a sharp argument about it. She kicked him out of the house, and he left town when the court denied his petition. The judge found no compelling evidence to believe him.”
“What does that mean for us?” Blake asked.
“If the will is found, Dean would reopen probate to have the sale set aside. Mary would have to repay him, but you’re still out of the property. The court would kick everything back to being between Mary and Dean. Your mom isn’t automatically protected as a good-faith buyer, though the judge could still find shehad no responsibility to find the will. It’s all speculative. Even if she’s found not liable, she’d have to wait to be repaid once this all played out. Property costs more today, so finding another place could be problematic.”
“Would it be possible for Mary to give Dean what she received for the sale and let us keep the property?”
“That would have to be negotiated on their own. I have my doubts Dean would agree to that, but I could be wrong.”
