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“Love you too.” I hung up and shoved the phone in my pocket. “Twenty! Here I come!”
I left the room and began the search for my niece. Within a minute, I knew she was hiding under my bed. I could hear her giggle when I walked into the room. True to my word, I decided to make her sweat a little. I left the room and went into the kitchen to grab us both some water to hydrate once I found her. As I turned the corner, someone knocked on my door. I abandoned my original path to answer.
“Who is it?”
“William.”
I frowned. My cousin and I hadn’t spoken in years. Ever since I cursed out half the family at my parents’ will reading, most of them didn’t bother with me much. His mother was one of them. She forbade her children from speaking to me again. It was hard at first. Sometimes, we’d see each other, and it would hurt not to say anything. Over the years, it got to the point where we barely acknowledged each other’s existence.
My hand lingered on the knob before I twisted it open. William stood on the other side with a pained look on his face.
“You good?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Dad died.”
My eyes widened. His father was my mother’s youngest brother. William and his father were very close, so I knew this was eating him up.
“I’m sorry to hear that, William. Come in.” I stepped aside and allowed him in. “Give me a second.”
I headed to my bedroom and located Precious.
“Gotcha!” I said, dropping to the floor. She squealed as she scrambled from under the bed.
“I almost got you!” she declared.
“Yeah, you did. Hey, Precious, I have a visitor. Can you sit in here and watch TV for me for a little bit?”
“Okay.”
She climbed onto the bed and relaxed into my pillows. Grabbing the remote, I turned on her favorite movie and left the room. William stood in front of the fireplace, staring at the old family photo perched on the mantle. His head turned slightly as he looked back at me.
“It doesn’t seem like it’s been seventeen years,” he said.
“Yeah... It doesn’t.” I took a seat on the couch.
“This place doesn’t look the same as it did when I was a kid.”
“I renovated a few years ago. I could never move out, so I made it my own.”
“It looks good.”
“Thanks. So... Was Uncle James sick?”
He slowly turned around with his hands in his pocket. “Lung cancer. I guess all those cigars caught up with him. It’s been a quiet three days.”
“He died three days ago?”
“Yeah. Nobody was sure if you would have wanted to know, given the parameters of your relationship with the family.”
“I guess. Have arrangements been made?”
“The funeral is Saturday at one. Everybody is meeting up at the house around eleven.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll talk to Bella and make her aware.”
He nodded. “You know we miss y’all, Callum. You have to know none of us wanted to cut you off. It’s just... We were kids, man.”
“I don’t blame you. I blame the adults involved. William, a lot went down behind the scenes that you don’t know. I could understand those who couldn’t take us in because they couldn’t. I can’t hold that against them. What upset me were the people who flat-out said no if they couldn’t cash out on it. People were fighting over money they thought my parents had... money left to me and my sister... money that I refused to sign over. That’s what the falling out was about. Bella and I would have been left with nothing if I did that. My parents wouldn’t have wanted that any more than they wanted us to split up. Based on those two facts alone, I don’t regret anything I did or said.”
