AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mr. Prescott?”
He looked up and slid from the booth, his hand held out to me. “Please, call me Ansel. Ms. Gravestone, right?”
“Call me Willa.”
We shook hands and then he gestured to the seat across from him.
“Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me,” I said, reaching for the glass of water already on the table. “Have you been here long?”
“Only just arrived,” he assured me with a smile. “And I’ll be happy to help you.”
I let out a breath of relief.
“Vance didn’t give me much detail about your case,” Ansel said. “Only that you wanted to acquire legal guardianship of your fifteen-year-old sister.”
“Waverly,” I clarified. “Yes, that’s the gist of it.”
Mia had put me into contact with Vance Raider, the club’s attorney. He didn’t practice the type of law I needed to gain guardianship of Waverly, but he’d referred me to a colleague of his, and within twenty-four hours Ansel had called me personally, requesting a lunch meeting.
“You hungry?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked. “Yeah. I’m hungry.”
“You picked this place. Tell me what’s good.”
His conversation about something as normal as food immediately put me at ease.
“Can’t go wrong with corned beef and cabbage,” I said.
“Done. If it wasn’t a working lunch, I’d order a Guinness.”
“Good man,” I said with a chuckle.
After we ordered, we got back to the matter at hand.
“So, tell me about your situation,” he said, leaning back in the booth and peering at me with intelligent blue eyes.
“You don’t want to take notes?” I asked.
“Not right now. I learn better by listening.” He inclined his head. “So, tell me everything. And don’t leaveanythingout.”
“My mom is a flake,” I said dryly. “And she bailed several weeks ago with some random guy she’s with for the time being. Took the RV—which we were living in—our clothes and all our personal belongings…everything. Didn’t even call to say goodbye.”
“You and your sister were living in an RV?” he asked.
“Mom was behind on rent in the last shit hole we were living in,” I said slowly. “And instead of telling me, she went out and bought a used RV and said she wanted to take us on a road trip this summer.So we could all bond. Her words, not mine.”
Even though I’d proverbially shut the door on the relationship with my mother, it was still bitter. I was getting emotional and I needed to take a deep breath.
“She’s all talk. That’s how she is. Anyway, she’d had the RV for only a few weeks. It was just long enough for us to move all of our things into it when Waverly and I came home one day to find out we didn’thavea home at all. Mom—and the RV—were just gone.”
“And the guy she ran off with?”
“No idea who he is.”
He mulled my words over for a moment. “Then what happened?”
“My boyfriend’s club got involved. He’s a member of the Blue Angels.”
