Page 14 of Overkill

“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.