Inheritance

Everyone started at the bottom. That you’d spent college and law school grinding through mind-breaking readings and constructing arguments meant nothing. When you arrived at Holt & Fenwick, you didn’t make arguments or write appeals. Instead, you sorted through ancient receipts and tried to determine whether a forgotten bank account with $2.30 left counted towards an estate’s taxable value.

All families have them. One uncle or sister doesn’t fit. There’s the uncle who served a year in Chillicothe because he kited checks, then spent the next twenty years being a handyman in a village with one red light. Or the cousin who was a couple semesters away from their master’s, was engaged, had a job lined up, then, according to family rumors, woke up one morning and threw it all away to live on a subsistence farm.

They’re not violent. They still come to family functions sometimes. The successful siblings try a few times to make them feel included, but it doesn’t work. Instead, when they do come, they mostly sit at the holiday table, smile, and watch without saying much. When they leave, someone will stand at the door, wave, then shake their head after they are out of sight.

When they pass, the rare case is discovering that the weird uncle was a savant-level day trader who accumulated millions he never spent. Fenwick’s son loved telling that story, and how it spawned a feeding frenzy of relatives who came out of the woodwork looking for a piece. Most of the time, it’s one of those quiet loose ends that no one really knows how to handle.

At Holt & Fenwick, you start as the associate who gets to ‘handle’ it.

Margaret Renner was that aunt in the Renner family. She never married and outlived her older brother Sam and younger sister Lily. Her nephew had a vague memory of Aunt Margie from a Christmas when he was eight; she’d told him that Christmas trees were a memory of Yggdrasil, the Norse tree of the universe. He’d decided she was weird.

When the Probate court called the nephew and informed him Aunt Margie had died without a will, and he was the closest living relative, he had no idea what to do. He’d almost forgotten Aunt Margie, much less known she’d bought a 50-acre farmstead near Gareth sometime in the early 80s.

A business license showed Aunt Margie had opened an ‘herb shop’ about the time she purchased the farm, but the license lapsed without renewal. My bet was on a pot farm.

Good news was that I senior associate this time. Four months on the job, and I wasn’t the new hire anymore. I’d be showing Josephine Crane the ropes.

Stepping out of the motel into early morning mist, she leaned against the building, scrolling on her phone, and sipping at a Styrofoam cup. She looked up at me and turned her wrist to check her watch. She smirked and went back to her phone.

“Morning Crane,” I said.

“We said 7, right?” she asked.

I looked at my phone. It was ten after.

“You in a hurry?”

She didn’t look up from her phone and shrugged.

“You said seven.”

I reached for the brand new suitcase at her feet, the one her parents probably gave her as a graduation present. She looked at me with eyes that could slice steel.

“Trying to be nice,” I said, stepping away and loading my stuff in the trunk.

She waited, not moving until I’d loaded everything. Then, she hauled her laptop bag and suitcase into the trunk and went to the passenger seat, shooting me another look when she found it locked. I pushed the unlock button, and she got in.

I got in and started the car. She’d returned to her phone and sipped at the coffee.

“Where’d the coffee come from?” I asked.

She didn’t look up and gestured with the cup. “Office.”

“They only have one cup?”

“No, there were a bunch of them.”

I waited. She didn’t catch the meaning or chose not to. I started the car and entered the address in my phone’s GPS. It said we’d be there in forty-five minutes, and since we were in the middle of nowhere, forty-five minutes meant what my mother would describe as a ‘good’ forty-five minutes.

I turned on the radio and found a news station before pulling us onto the highway.

She alternated between her phone and unreadable evaluations of the farmland we passed. It turned out that the news station I’d found wasn’t a news station. I’d caught the end of the top of the hour update before it transitioned to country music, and as its playlist rolled on, she added disapproving glances at the radio to her rotation.

Even with the GPS, I passed the obscure turnout framed by two splintered fence posts. Nothing was visible from the road, and the GPS scolded me after a half mile. Doubling back, I checked with Crane. She scanned without saying anything and shrugged. I turned onto the twin dirt paths with grass growing between them.

The rental undulated over the trail, and I’d prepared to give up and make a phone call when we rounded a bend and found it.

It was a cottage-style house that looked like something from New England instead of rural Ohio. The pond had been constructed, and the trail leading to the house went over the earthen dam.

I eased the car onto the dam and found the bare earth where Aunt Margie had parked the ancient Chevy Luv pickup. I’d had the truck towed and sold to a junkyard before we left the office.

The patch of garden behind the house had suffered without Aunt Margie to tend it. Trellises of tomatoes now battled climbing weeds.

Crane got to her things before I did. She pulled a set of keys out of her bag and unlocked the front door. I stayed out and walked around the house.

In addition to the vegetable garden, a smaller herb garden lived nearer the house. Weeds had invaded it too, but what looked like Rosemary and the rest held their own. Beyond the garden, a worn trail led into the forest.

At the front of the house, Crane had left the door ajar, and since I heard her moving to the right, I went left.

Aunt Margie kept the herbs somewhere in the house. The still air inside was perfumed with it.

Always strange to see the state of a house when death paused everything. Organized but unfussy, a comfortable chair with worn upholstery at the edges dominated a small living room. An end table beside it was piled with library books, and I scribbled a note to return them. I didn’t enter the bedroom. The covers remained pulled back when she’d risen for the last time. A small office had a desk, and I groaned when I saw a pair of filing cabinets.

I pulled the top drawer of one open. It held a folder labeled ‘car’. Inside, a receipt from the Gareth Napa Auto parts from 1987 showed she’d paid cash for a new headlight and paid $13.29 for it. It had many, many companions. I sighed and turned away.

Crane remained in the far end of the house. I crossed through the kitchen and poked my head in, finding the origin of the scent.

She’d already begun on a ledger. Rougher than the rest of the house, the walls were wood paneled, and the rafters overhead were exposed. Bundles of dried herbs dangled and scented the air. Rows of shelves held glass vials with what looked like essential oils. A mortar and pestle rested on the table next to Crane’s laptop. The room belonged to a different house. I guessed this is what the ‘herb shop’ was.

She typed while reading from what looked to be a piece of parchment.

“You good in here?” I asked.

She glanced and nodded.

“There’s an office at the other end of the house. Two filing cabinets,” I held up two fingers.

She nodded without lifting her head. I guess that meant the office was mine.

Returning to the office, I sat at the little desk and started on the drawers. The firm had given us two days.

With nothing in it but to get started, I began grinding, clearing out the stray receipts in the desk before going into the cabinets.

Aside from the occasional whirl of my laptop’s cooling fan, the only sound was the subtle creaks old houses make. It made me wonder what a typical day for Aunt Margie was.

I’d made it through the top drawer of the first cabinet when I heard Crane’s voice. Checking the time, it was just before eleven. I stretched my shoulders and rose.

Crane hadn’t moved. A pile of parchment sheets lay on the floor face down, and she’d started on a folder with more.

“You say something?” I asked.

“Looks like she ran a kind of fortune-teller business. Herbs. Incense. Essential oils.”

She pulled open a drawer and lifted a deck of Tarot cards.

I crossed into the room. My head bumped against one of the hanging bundles. It lifted off the nail it hung from and fell at my feet.

Crane followed the movement, and I picked the bundle up. I sniffed at it. Warm and resinous, I sniffed again. Sage?

“Maybe she liked Ren fairs?”

Frowning, Crane returned the Tarot cards and lifted one of the parchments from the pile and read:

Let those who hear forget to speak.

Let what I offer be received.

My will is spoken, my will is done.

What I have opened cannot be undone.

She raised an eyebrow, and I shrugged. The nephew had said she was strange. I thought about another Ren fair joke, but drew a blank. I sniffed the herb bundle again, trying to place it.

She laid the parchment back face down. “I’ll be done here in a bit. You can go work in the office.”

I turned and crossed back to the office, setting the herb bundle on the desk. She was right. The sooner we finished, the better.

The second drawer in the filing cabinet held tax returns since 1981. All of them. I worried whether two days would be enough.

Crane appeared in the doorway and tilted her head to look at where I was working.

“Tax returns?”

I nodded.

“We didn’t get breakfast,” she said. “I’m getting hungry.”

I pointed to the cabinets.

Ignoring me, she held out her phone. “I looked. There’s a little village with a sandwich shop about five miles further on. You should go.”

The tension in my shoulders answered, and I had the sense that she wanted me to agree.

“You going to answer,” she said. It fell somewhere between a statement and request.

“Sure, Crane.”

She pursed her lips and went to the door.

The mist had burned away, and the day had cleared. I clicked the unlock button before she reached the door, and she slid inside without having to pause. I started the car, and she frowned as a steel guitar twanged.

“Something else. Anything.”

I hit the seek button. A pop song came through.

We reached the end of the driveway, and I looked each way, then to her. She pointed to the right, and I turned onto the road.

We rode in silence for a few minutes. She glanced at me several times without speaking.

The sandwich shop was just off the road, red neon announcing sandwiches with a rough neon diagram of a sub beneath it. I pulled into the dirt parking lot and stopped.

“Morrow, one second,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I was prickly this morning, and I feel like you’re walking on eggshells now.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s ok to talk, ok? I just didn’t think this is what being a lawyer meant, and it all hit me at once this morning.”

I felt a kind of barrier fall. The ice princess melted a little.

“First day did the same thing to me. College and law school for this?”

She nodded as though she’d just expended a big effort. I reached for the door, and she touched my arm.

“One other thing,” she said. “Please don’t call me Crane. I hate that.”

“It’s your name.”

“Yes, and I hate hearing it. Jo, please?”

“Ok, Jo.”

I started to get out.

“One more thing, and I’ll stop. What’s your first name? Everyone calls you Morrow.”

“Owen.”

She smiled. “Owen. Is that ok?”

I smiled back. “Call me anything you’d like.”

Lunch was quick, and a half hour later, we pulled into the driveway at the house. She went ahead to the herb shop, and I returned to the office. A few minutes later, she came into the office and lifted a stack of folders from a filing cabinet drawer before returning to the other end of the house.

Finished with the tax returns, I summarized a few loose ends, including a home improvement loan in ’87. I imagined it was when she had added the herb shop to the house, but the receipts only listed lumber and supplies. No contractor. I noted it and kept an eye out for a contractor receipt or canceled check around the same date. She might have hired someone local.

As I finished, I remembered a receipt from that morning. It’d been misfiled with the car receipts. She’d bought a tiller and some garden implements. I went to the cabinet, flipped through the car folder, and carried it across to the herb shop. Jo looked up from her receipts, and I held the receipt out. She took it and scanned.

“Perfect,” she said. “Was looking for that.”

She smiled at me, her eyes taking on an odd mischievousness. I gave a little bow before returning to the office and starting on another drawer. Maybe Jo and I were getting on the same wavelength after a bad start.

It was near sunset when I looked up. Jo stood in the doorway, laptop bag slung over her shoulder.

“Let’s go. It’s getting late.”

I paused. The tone grated on my ear while sending an electric charge up my spine. Was she asking? It didn’t sound like asking.

“You heard me,” she said and smirked.

The charge again. I resented the hell out of the tone and wanted her to use it again. I shut down the computer and began to pack.

On the porch, I held out the key fob and unlocked the car doors. As I did, she plucked it from my hand and walked past me to the driver’s side, pushing her bag and a folder onto the back seat. She’d gotten in and started the car before I’d caught up to what’d happened. I went to the passenger side and put my things in the back.

She was fiddling with the radio and connecting the Bluetooth to her phone. Getting it connected, she started a playlist and closed her eyes as some old jazz started.

“Thank God,” she said and started backing the car out.

Glad to not have to worry about driving, I leaned back and closed my eyes.

“No, no, no,” she said. “You don’t get to go to sleep. You have to keep me company. It’s an hour back to town.”

“A good forty-five minutes,” I said.

“Forty-five minutes, then. Tell me about the job. It’s my first day.”

“You’ve seen it all. Today, except more of it.”

“What’s the weirdest thing you found?”

“Weirdest,” I said, feeling the car turn off the bumpy trail and onto the highway. “Sex stuff, I guess. One man had an epic nudie magazine collection from the sixties. All organized in a walk-in closet. Like walking into a perv library.”

“You look?”

“Of course,” I smiled.

“And?”

“Kind of innocent. Pretty girls, real boobs, no clothes. What about you? You find anything weird today?”

“Whole thing is weird, going through a dead woman’s stuff.”

“Tell me about her. All I got were auto receipts and tax returns.”

“Think she was a witch.”

I opened my eyes and turned to look at her. The sun had set, and her face reflected the dashboard lights.

“You believe in that stuff?”

She glanced. “Not sure yet.”

A diner appeared as we crested a hill, and she eased us off the highway and into the parking lot. I got out and took off my suit jacket. I tossed it into the rear and noticed she’d brought a folder from the house.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing else to do tonight. Thought I’d work.”

She locked the car doors and pushed into the restaurant. I trailed and caught the door when she let it go. A waitress stood behind the counter and pointed to one of several empty booths by the window. Jo chose and sat, and I slid across from her.

The waitress brought water, laid menus before us, and said she’d be back.

Jo scanned the menu and decided. I did the same. As I did, she looked at me, considering. She beckoned and leaned forward.

“I did find something weird,” Jo said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Aunt Margie had a boyfriend,” she whispered.

“Really?”

Jo nodded and glanced to see if anyone was listening.

“Maybe more than one.”

“Go Aunt Margie.”

Jo’s eyes got wide. “I know, right? That old and still bringing them in.”

“Any names?”

She shook her head. “Just references about working the garden. Helping around the house. Teaching them to anticipate her needs.”

“Anticipate her needs?”

Jo nodded, wide-eyed. The waitress returned. The waitress asked us what we wanted. We both ordered, and the waitress departed.

“How’d she…. teach?” I asked.

“You heard one of the little poems she wrote,” Jo said. “Like affirmations.”

I remembered the scent of sage and the bundle of herbs. I looked over my shoulder, relieved when I realized I’d put the herb bundle in with my laptop.

“That’s what you wanted to ‘work’ on?” I asked.

She blushed.

“How many are there?”

“A bunch of them. Like spells. Recite this while burning this herb. Do this under the new moon.”

“And you believe it works?”

“We’re in nowhere Ohio,” she said. “What else am I going to do tonight?”

Our food arrived, and between embarrassed glances from Jo, we ate in silence. I found myself looking out the window, watching the flash of headlights pass by. I had the sudden thought that I had no idea what was really going on inside any of them.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Jo said.

I shook my head.

“Tell me,” she said.

That tone, entitled and kind of sexy. It grated on my ear and sent a silver spark up my spine. I adjusted in my seat and wanted to tell her off.

“Was thinking that I had no idea about what people were doing in any of those cars. I’d never have guessed about Aunt Margie. Boyfriends. Witchcraft.”

She didn’t answer. I turned back, and she was watching me, eyes narrowed as though I’d just tried to pull something over on her.

“That’s what you were really thinking?” she asked.

“Yes. Who else would be thinking it?”

“Right. Who else?”

We finished. The waitress took our plates and left the check. I reached for it. She grabbed it at the same time, and we faced off, each gripping one end.

“Firm’s paying. You can do the expense report if you want,” I said.

She smirked and let it go. Sliding out of the booth, she paused and looked down at me, thinking. Then, she tapped the seat.

“Go order us dessert,” she said.

Grating and entitled. I shivered, then closed my eyes.

“Why?”

“I said order us dessert.”

Again, stronger.

“What.. what do you want?”

“Show me you’ve been paying attention. I’ll be judging.”

“Paying attention?”

She spun on her heel and walked away.

A throb of the charge continued up my spine, coupled with hot irritation. My face felt hot, even as I rose from the seat and went to the cash register. The waitress held out her hand for the check.

I held it out. “Could we get a couple coconut cream pies?”

She took the check and wrote it up before handing it back. “Sure thing. I’ll bring them out.”

Dazed, I returned to the booth. A moment later, two slices of pie appeared before me, each with a bright red cherry on top.

Jo appeared and slid into the booth. She looked from the pie to me. She adjusted in the seat, stretching her back and taking a deep breath. Her face was flushed. Turned on?

Then, her expression darkened, and she lifted the cherry off her pie and tossed it onto my plate.

“Adequate. No cherries next time,” she said.

She lifted a fork and plunged it into the slice.

Stronger than before, her tone, entitled and superior. I gripped the table as a flush of that silvery pleasure radiated out from the center of my chest.

“Have some,” she said.

Hand trembling, I lifted the fork and ate a couple bites. She watched, pleased but tinged with a hint of doubt. She looked like a little girl who’d gotten away with something and waited to get called out.

She ate about half of the slice before setting the fork down and gathering her purse.

“You can pay now. Make sure to tip well,” she said.

“Jo-“

She looked up from her purse. It froze me in place.

“You were going to say something?”

My throat went dry as her eyes burned through me. I snatched the check and rose. I added forty percent for the tip.

Jo had already started the car and was waiting as I slid into the passenger seat.

“Seatbelt,” she said and smiled.

My arm reached and slid it across my chest.

We rode the rest of the way to the hotel in silence. She tapped her finger on the steering wheel, mirroring the syncopation of the jazz.

The occasional glance froze me in place, like I dangled on a string she pulled.

She slid the car to a stop before the hotel office. I went in and got our rooms from the prior night.

Parking in front, we both got out and leaned over the rear seat. She lifted her laptop bag and looked into my eyes as she lifted the folder from Aunt Margie’s house, pulling it close to her chest.

She went to the rear and popped the trunk, lifting her suitcase out and setting it on the ground.

“7am sharp tomorrow,” she said.

I nodded, hating how good it felt.

She smiled with a kind of triumph.

I got my suitcase and went to the door to my room.

“Owen,” she called.

I didn’t turn.

“Are you dating anyone?”

“No.”

Her smile was broad. “Good.”

She pushed through into her room and closed the door.

My key banged against the door, missing the lock. Wrist bending, it slapped against the metal door, sending a jolt of pain up my arm. I’d glanced towards Jo’s door instead of paying attention to what I was doing.

Pulling back, I guided the key in and twisted it. The lock thumped, and I went inside.

The air inside hadn’t moved. Hot, close, and irritating, I went to the air conditioner under the window and turned it to north pole before tossing my bag onto the bed.

The air conditioner rattled and spat bits of dust. I unzipped my laptop bag.

The herb bundle lay next to the computer. I lifted it, preparing to hurl it against the wall. Instead, I lifted it to my nose. Resinous and clean, I set it on the nightstand.

Pacing didn’t help, and I wound up sitting on the edge of the bed, one foot on, one foot on the floor. Local television was hopeless, and I wound up on the weather channel as I stared past the news about a warm front passing over Louisiana.

The pie had been a test. Anything would have been right, almost. Girls did stuff like that.

I’d been teased and scolded for being forward, while the girl took my hand and put it on her hip. Fair play, I guess, but being talked to like… what? A servant? No, servant and not very bright. 7am sharp.

She’d smile if I were on time. I wanted that. Damnit.

Surfing the web didn’t do much. I debated masturbating to get rid of the distraction. That would be wrong, though, wouldn’t it?

A tendril of the herb’s scent reached my nose, and I lifted it and inhaled.

It would be warm in Montana, the television said.

Don’t stew on this, I decided. Get it out in the open. It wouldn’t take long, and I left the television on as I marched out of the room.

I rapped on her door. A shadow moved behind the peephole, then the door unlocked.

She’d changed into a bathrobe. I didn’t wait for her to speak.

“I don’t appreciate the way you’re talking to me.”

She lifted an eyebrow.

“You’re not my boss, and I don’t think talking down to me is appropriate,” I said.

“Like pounding on my door when you might have phoned? That kind of appropriate?”

I flinched. I hadn’t thought of the phone.

“Nevertheless-“

“Owen.”

The sentence died in my throat.

She stood aside from the door and crooked a finger. I drifted inside and felt the breeze of air as the door closed.

She gathered the robe around her and sat on the bed.

“This was wrong. It’s not the way to confront someone. Is it?” she asked.

My face turned crimson.

“I-“

“It’s not the way to confront someone, is it?”

“No.”

“You’re forcing me to embarrass and scold you when I’d rather be teaching you to pay attention and anticipate.”

Anticipate, she’d said that before. Rising, she stood before me and touched my temple. Electric pleasure bloomed from her finger, and I shuddered at the rush of arousal.

“Isn’t that better?” she asked.

I stretched at the tension the arousal caused. When I opened my eyes, her face was close to mine, eyes intent and unreadable.

“Yes,” I said.

“Worth apologizing for?”

“I apologize, Jo. I lost my temper.”

“Almost,” she said. “Josephine.”

I shook my head.

“Josephine, my full name,” she said.

“I apologize, Josephine.”

She sighed, her eyelids drooping. “So much better.”

Taking her finger away, the absence felt like unplugging. My body wilted as she went to the bed and slid up on it.

She twirled a bare foot. Unable to look away, I sank to my knees. My mouth found it, and laid gentle kisses along the insole and moved over the toes. Attending to every part, I wanted to taste the other foot. A stray thought of the television in my room passed through my head and evaporated.

Josephine, and her body became the only thought. But, it wasn’t thought. Her skin texture, the way she sighed and moved when I found a spot along the back of her knee, became the universe.

At length, I found myself between her legs with heat and wetness on my lips and tongue. Her thighs vibrated against my head until freezing. She sighed and exhaled with a little cry, and I continued until her hips stopped pressing against my mouth, and her legs fell away.

I slid off the bed, sitting on the floor with my back against the mattress.

She caught her breath above me.

“7am sharp,” she said. “And no masturbating. You haven’t earned it.”

Frustration, like my arousal doubled then slammed into a wall. I rose and left.

My room had chilled to something resembling a refrigerator. My eyes found the sage on the nightstand. I lifted it to my nose, relaxing and promising to be more mindful of my anger.