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With the void growing inside me I could no longer focus. When the afternoon slipped away without a sign of Remy, the emptiness consumed me. I was drowning in it.
Over the next two days, Remy remained absent from the office. My heart beat a little faster every time the door rattled, but each time it wasn’t him. I remained alone with nothing to do but stare at his vacant office. It was torture.
The image of Remy’s empty desk plagued me even as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep. The hurt was like a physical weight on my chest, an all-consuming ache impossible to escape.
I had been ready to give him everything I had, but he didn’t want it. I had fooled myself into believing that his engagement wasn’t real, but it was. And after making me believe that I was special to him, he left me. Now he wasn’t coming back.
This was not the way you treated someone you loved. So that left one conclusion. The man I had been in love with since I was 14 years old, didn’t love me. And why would he when no one did?
I returned to work each day after that expecting him not to show yet being hurt all over again when he wasn’t there. No one was. It took two weeks before the rattling door was anyone other than housekeeping. So the day when a stumpy, formally dressed man ascended the stairs, I stood and greeted him confused.
“Can I help you?” I asked wondering if he was at the wrong address.
“My name is Robert Wendel. I’m Mr. Lyon’s attorney,” he said overflowing with anxiety.
“Mr. Lyon isn’t here,” I informed him.
“Yes. I have papers for you to sign.”
“Me?”
“You are Dillon Harris, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Then they’re for you.”
Staring at the lawyer, I thought back to when my mother first started working at the Lyon’s. There was a man like this who had shown up at our door. He made it very clear that we were never to talk about anything my mother overheard or saw at the Lyon’s residence. The papers she signed were for a non-disclosure agreement, but the threat to our lives if we talked about what we saw didn’t have to be written down.
“Oh,” I said realizing the extent to which Remy didn’t trust me.
Without asking any questions, I quickly signed my name wherever the lawyer directed me to. Each time, my heart clenched a little more. When the last page was signed, he handed me a large manila envelope.
“This is yours.”
“What is it,” I asked suspecting it was my copy of the paperwork.
“It’s the deed to the building for the outreach center.”
I froze. “I’m sorry, what is it?”
“The building’s deed,” he repeated this time searching my face to see if I understood. I didn’t. “What you signed was the paperwork for a trust that owned the building. You now have a controlling 51% interest in it.”
My mind spiraled. “I’m sorry, I’m confused. What does that mean?”
“It means that, for the most part, the building is yours. A part of the arrangement is that the building’s taxes will be paid by the Lyon family for the next 10 years. So you don’t have to worry about that. And you can do with it whatever you’d like. Which is, I assume, to create the outreach center you proposed to Mr. Lyon, correct?”
“Correct,” I confirmed still unsure of what was going on. Had Remy done this for tax purposes? Was this shady mafia world stuff? “So, I can do anything I want with it?”
“Anything.”
“If I wanted to sell it?”
“You could.”
“And just so I’m aware, how much is it worth?”
“I can’t tell you off the top of my head. But I included the property’s appraisal in your package,” he said gesturing to my envelope.
