AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 2
AINSLEY, THREE WEEKS EARLIER
“I’m glad you’re here with me, honey,” my mother says to me, patting my forearm. “I miss Aunt Nell so much, and this is just going to be a hard day.”
Mom’s parents died when she was in her late teens, and her mother’s older sister was the only family member left, so there was a deep bond between then. Aunt Nell—she allowed me to drop the “Great-” part when I was a kid—was almost like a grandmother to me, strict in some ways but fun and funny in a lot of others. I’ve spent the last two years taking care of her: living in her house with her, making sure her bills got paid, cooking for her and doing her laundry and chauffeuring her to doctors’ appointments.
Aunt Nell died three months ago, of a heart attack in her sleep, and the world seems emptier without her. We’re here today to hear the report from Aunt Nell’s lawyer, who’s also the executor of her will.
“And you,” Mom says to Mike, squeezing his hand. “I’m so glad you’re here, too.” Mike is Mom’s second husband, and the love she waited most of her life to find, after my own dad ditched her and then went off with his secretary, leaving me behind except for the occasional summer visit.
Mom totally deserves her doting second husband…and Mike certainly deserves Mom. They’re so great together, and so much in love. Doesn’t matter that they met on a dating site for middle-aged people. Doesn’t matter that Mom’s hair is graying and she’s not as slim as she used to be, Mike thinks she’s gorgeous. Doesn’t matter that Mike’s not the handsomest or the wealthiest guy, because he’s super nice. To everyone, but especially to Mom. Both of them just light up when they’re together.
I’m happy for both of them.
But, as always, I feel a little bit left out. I want a love like that, too. I just hope I don’t have to wait until I’m fifty-six years old to find it.
I’m still wondering about that, and deciding that it might be worth it even if I do have to wait that long, when the receptionist tells us we can go back to Mr. Turk’s office. Mike hops up and offers Mom his hand, assisting her to rise, and my heart melts all over, seeing how sweet he is to her and how much she blushes when she looks into his face.
Sigh.
It’s the kind of love I’d wanted from Jake, my ex. Ex-fiancé, to be specific. We started dating about four years ago, shortly after I’d met him at a local mixer for young professionals. I’d begun to be bored with my paralegal job and started wanting more recognition from the lawyers in the office. I don’t know quite why it mattered so much to them, but they started treating me better after a holiday party where I showed up on the arm of a handsome young architect.
Things had been going well at first. On Jake’s request, I furnished his new house with all designer stuff, giving up many of my free evenings to do it. Gradually, I began taking over tasks like his dry-cleaning, liaising with his cleaning service, taking my lunch hour to be at his place for a furniture delivery, stuff like that. And he kept saying that it wouldn’t be long before the house would be ready for me to move in.
It was exciting to be wanted by someone so well-regarded. So wealthy and handsome, so accepted at all the best parties…I’d been dazzled by the fact that he could have his pick of girlfriends, and he’d chosen me.
And then Aunt Nell fell and broke her hip, and everything changed.
Mom had sold the house I grew up in when she married Mike and moved into his house in North Carolina. She’d gotten a job she loved, working as a pediatric nurse at the hospital in Boone. She didn’t want to leave Mike. I totally got it.
Aunt Nell, age 88, didn’t want to move into the assisted-living facility once she got out of rehab; she wanted to be in her house. Her long-term care insurance would only cover four years’ worth of care, either in a nursing home or with daily caregivers at home.
It was up to me.
I know a lot of people would feel that it wasn’t their burden to bear, but this was my family. She was practically my grandmother. Since Mom was a single parent, I’d spent hours and hours of my childhood and teen years at Aunt Nell’s place, learning how to cook and take care of a house, as well as listening to all her stories of her younger years. More than once, she’d dispensed some pithy commentary on other people’s opinions along with her homemade molasses-ginger cookies, or smoothed my hair back after I’d cried about not being popular at school.
In short, she was worth my time.
I gave up my apartment and moved my belongings into Aunt Nell’s homey old red-brick foursquare. I spent my spare time purchasing items for a person with reduced mobility and retrofitting the formal dining room into a bedroom for her. I reduced my work hours to part-time and fought for permission to work remotely, finally obtaining it the week before Aunt Nell came home.
Aunt Nell had felt bad about “taking up so much of my time,” as she’d said. “You ought to be out living your life, sweetie, not spending it with an old lady like me. Get married! Travel! Don’t waste these precious years!”
I didn’t think I was wasting them. But I didn’t bother arguing with her.
Mr. Turk welcomes us into his office and closes the door behind us after offering us bottles of water. He starts right in on the contents of the will, which are pretty much as expected. Aunt Nell’s debts to be paid from her estate yada yada, house sold yada yada, certain bequests to her church and the local Humane Society yada yada to be fulfilled before assets are divided…
“And one bequest to you, Miss Ainsley,” the lawyer says, giving me a sympathetic smile. “That is, this is a bequest with conditions.”
I shake my head in confusion.
“She told me about this,” Mom says. She pats my hand again. “She was pretty determined.”
“This sum of money,” the lawyer says, showing me a piece of paper with a figure on it that makes me catch my breath, “goes directly to you, provided you meet the following conditions.”
I read silently as he reads aloud. “‘That Ainsley Watts spends at least ten days at the Mountain Ridge Resort with a companion of her choice, in order to scatter a portion of my ashes on the mountain behind the hotel; this vacation is to be taken within a year of my death and paid for out of my estate.’” He looks at me. “She was very definite about it being at Mountain Ridge, since she had spent her holidays there as a child and made so many happy memories.”
I recognize the name. She’d talked about it a lot: the lake sitting on top of one of the prettiest mountains in the whole Blue Ridge. The hiking. The fancy buffets. The swimming, the canoeing, the dance lessons. The nights under the stars.
