AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was sitting in the waiting room ten minutes later. I’d known I’d be the only one there. Still, I was made to wait the full ten minutes before Beau appeared from a nearby door and invited me into his office.
“Raintree! It’s so good to see you again, dear,” Beau roared as he stepped into the waiting area to greet me.
“It’s good to see you too, Beau,” I replied.
To say Beau Johnson was rotund was an understatement of enormous proportions, much like his waistline. His wife and law partner, Judith, was an excellent cook. In fact, she was a much better cook than she was a lawyer, which was why she was now a law partner in name only. At some point, she had agreed with her husband that it might be best if she no longer handled cases, according to the town rumor mill.
I followed Beau inside and took the seat he offered, not really knowing what to expect. I was my grandmother’s closest living relative, but she was just as likely to have left everything to the local animal shelter and gifted me only her ashes for keeping. I couldn’t say that I would complain about such a decision. I could have been a better granddaughter. I had tried to keep in touch with her as much as possible, visiting a couple of times a year, mostly during the holidays. Still, I mostly took the easy way out, calling to check on her and thinking that would be enough. Now, she was gone, and I had nothing but lost time to show for it all.
“I am so sorry about Leigha,” he told me as he sat behind his large desk, which looked even more gigantic in his rather cramped office.
“Thank you,” I replied politely.
“Well, let’s not waste any time. I know you must have a lot of things to take care of now that you’re here,” he told me, reaching for a blue-backed document on the desk. “There’s not a lot of information to go over here. Leigha left everything to you, without stipulations. The house, all of the land, her bank accounts, and all her physical belongings are yours. We just need to take the will up to the probate office and let claim requests go out before we finalize all the documentation making it yours.”
“Claim requests?”
“Yes. It’s just routine. A notice will go out asking anyone who has a claim to the property for any reason to come forward or lose their right to do so.”
“Claim for what?”
“Oh, anything that requires payment from the estate. Any unpaid creditors, for example.”
“I doubt there is any of that. Grandma was very diligent about paying her bills.”
“You’re probably right. It’s just a formality, part of the process of clearing the property for transfer to you.”
“I see. Well, what else do I need to do here then?”
“We just need to go up to the judge’s office and file it. You’re the executor of the will, so you are in control of the property pending the transfer of the estate. Effectively, it’s yours now. You just can’t do anything with it until everything concludes, meaning you can’t sell it or make any major changes to the property itself.”
“I don’t have any plans to sell it or turn it into a club or anything, so that will be just fine.”
“Good to hear. Let’s get this thing over to the probate office and get the ball rolling then,” he said, already pushing his chair back away from his desk and beginning to stand.
I followed him out as we chatted a little more about the specifics of how everything would work and how long it would take. In all honesty, I had no idea how long I would be in town. I had no intention of moving into the house. I had a life back in California, though it was a bit rocky at the moment. This would be more of a vacation home, somewhere to get away from it all. Even that would probably not be something I’d pursue right away. Jon Rayburn needed to finish with the house next door before I’d be comfortable spending any serious amount of time in my grandmother’s house—my house. I had grown up there, but it hadn’t felt like home in a long time.
Fifteen years had passed, but I had never gotten over what happened with Jon and refused to let even Grandma try to talk to me about him. She had tried to several times, but I always shut the conversation down. His life after me was mostly a mystery, and I liked it that way. Other than him, I had fond memories of my time here with Grandma. She had been my salvation after my parents’ death in an accident when I was ten. My main regret was not having spent more time with her after I had left Muskrat Creek behind.
