by Marisa Logan
I looked at my siblings, then back at the lawyer. “What...what does that mean, exactly?”
“It means that your portion of the funds would be equally distributed among the other heirs.”
I looked at my brother and sister. They didn't meet my eye.
“But I don't have to worry about that, right?” Jimmy asked. “I mean, I graduated.”
“You'll just need to submit a copy of your transcripts,” the lawyer said. “And then you'll receive your inheritance.”
Jimmy smiled. I frowned at him, but I kept my mouth shut. He'd always been the smartest of us, at least as far as traditional education was concerned. He was basically a genius, or maybe a savant. Though he sorely lacked in common sense and he was horrible at personal interaction. I was pretty sure that whatever was wrong in his head, in addition to occasionally giving him panic attacks, also made it hard for him to empathize with other people or understand their emotions.
We went over some more details with the lawyer, and each of us was given copies of the will, along with all of the information we'd need about the trust funds. When it was all finished, I headed out to my car and sat on the hood, flipping through the pages of the will, trying to get my head around it.
“Mom?” Ariella asked. “I don't get it. Do we not get any money?”
I looked across the parking lot at Jimmy and his wife as they got into his Prius. “I'm not sure, dear.”
I shoved the papers into my purse. “Wait in the car. I need to go talk to your uncle.”
Chapter 3
“Jimmy,” I said, walking over to him and stopping in front of his car. “Can we talk?”
He exchanged a look with his wife. She glanced my way, but said nothing. We'd never met before the funeral. They'd only been married for a few weeks. She was also pregnant, though my dad claimed that Jimmy had told him they'd gotten engaged before they ever knew about the pregnancy.
Jimmy gestured for her to wait in the car. He stepped away and closed the driver's side door, then walked over to stand in the shade of the office building. He stuck his hands in his pockets and watched me approach. I tried to get a read on what he was thinking or feeling, but it was hard to tell. Especially with the dark sunglasses he was wearing.
“That money is going to make a big difference for Ariella,” I said.
He nodded and rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Yeah, I bet it will. I'm pretty glad about it myself. I'm going to have a kid soon. Did Dad tell you?”
“Yeah.” I forced a smile. “She's due in December?”
He nodded, looking back to the car where his young wife waited. “Yeah, we're both pretty excited. I think I'm going to be a good father.”
I didn't know what to say to that. It was hard for me to imagine Jimmy as a father. Despite everything I knew about his mind not working quite the same as anyone else's, he was a bright guy. And I guess he'd always been honest and supportive. He'd helped me out financially a few times, before we stopped talking. I figured he could be a good father, maybe. His heart was in the right place. I just worried that his emotional problems would cause difficulties.
“The thing is,” I said, “I didn't finish college. I went to like one semester before PJ and I split up and I had to drop out.”
“But now's your chance!” he said, grinning. “You can go for free. Grandma's money is going to pay for it.”
“Jimmy, I can't go back to college now.” I spread my arms to either side. “I'm twenty-seven years old, I have a nine year old daughter, I've got an ex-husband who's in jail, and I've got a crappy waitressing job that barely pays the bills.”
“So quit.” He shrugged. “Even after paying for college, you'll have enough leftover to last for years.”
I sighed and rubbed my fingers against the bridge of my nose. “It's not that simple, Jimmy. Even if I started college, I wouldn't get money for anything besides tuition until after I graduate. The trust fund can't be used for rent, or groceries, or anything else.”
“Oh.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, once you finish school—”
“I'm not going back to college, Jimmy.”
He looked at me like I was stupid.
“But then you don't get any money,” he said.
“That's what I'm here to talk to you about. If I don't go, it's breach of trust. The rest of the money gets divided between the rest of you. Well, you, Charlotte, and Ben, I guess. But you can just repay me my share, and—”
“Why should I do that?”
I frowned at him, putting my hands on my hips. “What?”
“Well, I don't see why I should help you cheat the will. I'm pretty sure that's illegal.”
“Jimmy, it's not illegal. You'd just be helping me out. I need the money.”
“Yeah, so do I.” He looked at his pregnant wife. “I'm going to buy a house, and put the rest in a savings account for my kid. Make sure she can go to college when she grows up.”
“I want that for my kid too,” I said. “But I'm drowning in debt right now. I can't catch up. I just need your help. Even if I can't get Charlotte and Benjamin to help, if you got one-third of my share, that's, what, more than $60,000? It would pay out to you right away, since you've already graduated. And then you just need to give me my share.”
He started heading for his car. “I'm not helping you cheat the system, Donna. I don't see what the big deal is. Just go to college. It's what Grandma wanted.”
“It's not that easy!” I threw out my arms, shouting across the parking lot at him. “You don't understand. You haven't raised a kid alone for the last nine years.”
“Don't blame me for your mistakes.” He opened the door to his car. “I helped you plenty in the past, and what did it get me? For God sakes, Donna, last time we talked you threw me out of your house.”
“I didn't...” I trailed off, not sure I could really deny that. Jimmy had stayed with me for about a year, when he moved out of Mom's house. We'd been roommates in a cramped townhouse, and it had been...difficult, to say the least. He'd moved out when he met his old girlfriend, the one who had ended up cheating on him. We'd had an argument on his last day, and it had ended with me shouting at him and demanding he give me back his key, since he was leaving.
I suppose I'd been angry. I think, in a way, I'd felt betrayed. Abandoned. I'd been counting on him to help me out with the bills while we lived together. He'd been so focused on falling in love and starting his new relationship that he hadn't stopped to think that by leaving me, he was sticking me with the rent and all the bills on my own. I'd struggled for the next six months after he moved out, until I finally had to get out of my lease and move into a smaller place in a crappier neighborhood. I'd never recovered financially.
Maybe it was unfair for me to blame him. After all, it's not like he didn't have a good reason to move out. Even if the girl he'd moved in with had turned out to be a bitch. We hadn't spoken, other than trading a few emails here and there, since the day he left. For awhile I'd kept telling myself that he was the one who needed to call me first, and apologize. Looking back on it, maybe I was the one who owed him an apology. But I guess it was too late for that now.
“Your problems aren't my fault,” he said, gripping the top of the car door in a white-knuckled fist. “I always tried to help you. I did. Who used to babysit Ariella for free? Who loaned you the money every time your car broke down? Heck, Donna, who used to clean up all of your beer bottles from the kitchen? Not that you ever thanked me.”
He shook his head, a sad smile on his lips. “I know you had it rough,” he said, “but you made your own choices. And you've got to fix your own problems.”
“You're a selfish pig, Jimmy.” I clenched my fists at my sides.
“Yeah, I know you think that. You always have. But maybe you should stop and think about who helped who all those times over the years. When did you ever do something to help me? When did you even show me gratitude for everything I did? Yeah, sure, call me a selfish pig if it makes you feel better. But I'm not the one who scr
ewed your life up. And I'm finally getting mine figured out, and you can't even be happy for me. You didn't call when I got married, when you found out Casey was pregnant. Nothing. You haven't said two words to me in years, and the last thing you said to me was 'You're going to get the rest of your stuff out of here and give me your key.'”
He took off his sunglasses and tossed them into the car. I met his eyes from across the parking lot.
“You can't come begging to me when you need something,” he said. “Maybe if you'd really been a sister to me for all these years, I'd think about helping you. But we're not family. We haven't been for a long time.”
He got into the car. I watched him sit there for a few minutes, gripping the steering wheel. He was shaking, and I thought I saw tears welling in his eyes. His wife was trying to comfort him, but whatever she was saying didn't seem to be helping.
Finally, red-faced and sobbing, he pulled the car out and drove off. I watched him go, not sure whether to be mad at him or at myself. Most of what he'd said was right. I hadn't supported him for years. I hadn't ever bothered to reach out and make amends. Until today, when I asked him for money.
Maybe he was an ass for refusing to help me. But I was pretty sure I was a bigger ass for treating him so bad that he didn't feel like he could.
Chapter 4
I tried talking to Charlotte and Benjamin, but it was a waste of time. We hadn't seen each other since I was twelve, and there was no connection there. They made it quite clear that if I breached the trust, they would gladly keep my share of the inheritance.
Later on, at Dad's house, I thought about talking to Amanda. She and I had a whole different set of problems, though it seemed the inheritance issue was one we were sharing. We both stood to lose nearly two hundred grand, me because I'd dropped out to raise my daughter, her because she'd decided to become a hair dresser instead of going to college.
“I'm sure there's some way to contest the will,” Dad told me. We were sitting in his kitchen, eating meatball sandwiches. Ariella was downstairs, playing XBox. Amanda was outside, smoking a cigarette and talking to our stepmom.
“I don't know,” I said. “It seems pretty clear-cut to me.”
“I know inheritances can be a mess,” he said. “You remember what happened between me and your Aunt Candice.”
“Yeah, I remember.” I wasn't clear on all of the exact details, but when Grandpa had died, Dad had been screwed out of his fair share of the inheritance. His sister had, allegedly, destroyed the most recent version of Grandpa's will, so that the one read after the funeral was an older version that favored her in the inheritance. Dad had gotten Grandpa's Cadillac, but no money.
“Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
I snorted. “Right. Dad, I can barely afford to pay my rent.”
“Well, I can put you in touch with mine. Maybe he'll take the case on pro bono.”
“Sure, Dad. Thanks.” I picked pieces off my roll, feeling defeated. I was pretty sure no lawyer was going to be able to help me.
“Have you thought about just going back to college?” he asked. “I mean, you'd get five years to finish. And you already have one semester under your belt. Unless those credits expired.”
I sighed and pushed my plate away. “I don't know. I don't see how I can juggle school along with taking care of Ariella and working full time.”
“Well, she's older now,” he said. “And she's pretty independent. It's not like when she was a baby and you had to keep an eye on her full time.”
“True.” One of the hidden blessings to raising Ariella alone was that she'd learned at a young age to pull her own weight. I never had to worry about cleaning up after her, and she helped unload the dishwasher when it was full. She'd even started doing her own laundry, just because she'd grown tired of me never having time to keep up with it.
“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe I could go part time. But then I wouldn't finish in time.”
“You would if you took summer classes,” Dad suggested. “Instead of taking five classes per semester, take three. Then make up the extra courses over the summer. It could be good for you. You don't want to be a waitress the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, I know.” I leaned my chin into my hand, thinking it over. There'd been a time when I was younger that I wanted to be a lawyer. I was pretty sure I was over that now, but I still knew I didn't want to wait tables my whole life. In truth, I'd be content with just about any decent office job. It didn't matter so much what kind of career it was. As long as it paid the bills and helped me support my kid.
And even after taking out the costs of college, I'd have more than a hundred grand left from the inheritance. About twenty of that would go to my credit card debt, but the rest would be a nice nest egg. Maybe enough for a down payment on a house, then I could set the rest aside for Ariella's college fund.
“Your stepmother and I could help out with Ari,” Dad said. “I work from home now, so I could keep an eye on her while you're in classes. Maybe kick her ass at some Gears.”
“Thanks. I'll think about it.”
***
I gave it some serious consideration over the next few days. When I had some time in between my work shifts and running errands, I looked up some schools in the South Jersey area. Rutgers had a pretty good reputation, though I doubted I'd be able to get in. I looked up my local community college and browsed through their programs. None of it seemed too hard, except for the fact that I hadn't been in school for nine years, and I wasn't sure how I'd do. I'd done well enough in high school, A's and B's, and maybe the occasional C when I just wasn't trying hard enough. Community college wouldn't be too hard. It would more be a matter of finding time for it without the rest of my life falling apart in the process.
I headed into Ari's room and sat next to her on the bed. “Ari, I want to talk to you.”
“Ugh,” she said, pausing her XBox game. “Here we go.”
“Oh, come on. Give your mom a break. This isn't a bad talk.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “If this is about porn, eww, I don't look at that stuff anyway.”
“How do you even know what porn is?” I frowned at her.
“Mom, come on. It's the internet.”
I sighed and leaned back, banging my head against the wall. Oh, the joys of raising a millennial child.
“Okay, no porn. Remind me to have you teach me how to install parental controls on your computer.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Sure, okay Mom.”
I knew it would be a waste of time. The kid knew more about using computers than I did. But then, she'd grown up with them. I always came to her when I found a virus or something on my PC.
“Okay, but seriously. I want to talk to you about me going to college.”
She shrugged and unpaused her game. “Go for it.”
I put a hand over her controller. She yanked it away. “God, Mom, you made me die!”
“Can we talk for a minute, please?” She paused the game again, giving me an impatient look. “I'm thinking about going back to school. I need to know how you feel about that.”
“It's cool with me.” She shrugged and pushed her glasses up her nose. “We get money when you graduate, right?”
“If I can graduate, yes.”
“Cool. So do it.”
“You know it's going to mean more work for you.”
She gave me a wry look. “Why? I've got my own homework.”
“I meant around the house. I'll need your help keeping up with things around here.”
“I already do that,” she said. “I do my laundry, and the dishes, and yesterday I cleaned the bathroom.”
“You did?” I hadn't noticed, and I suddenly felt bad for that. “Well, I'll have to give you a raise in your allowance. Or, well, give you an allowance.”
She grinned real big.
“After we get the money.”
“Oh, fu—” I shot her a sharp look and she laughed. “Fudge. That'll be forever!”<
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“Well, it's the best I can do. So, are you seriously okay with this?”
“Yeah. Can I play my game now?”
I got up and rubbed her head, making her squeal. “Yeah, kid. Sure. Enjoy being young while you have the chance.”
“I hate it when people say that.” She unpaused her game, a look of deep concentration on her face as she started killing whatever alien monsters she was fighting. “Old people can play games too. Grandpa does.”
“Hey, I play games!”
She looked at me like I'd said something stupid. “Mom, you play Wii. Wii games are for babies.”
“I like the Wii.” I frowned, realizing I sounded like a dork. It wasn't my fault I liked Mario Kart better than all of those violent shooting games Ariella and her grandfather played.
I headed back to my room and looked over the community college website one more time. “Well,” I said to myself, “I guess we're doing this then, aren't we?”
I started filling out the online application, feeling a sense of dread.
Chapter 5
Getting myself enrolled in classes turned out to be easy enough. The community college accepted all applicants, so my past grades weren't a factor. And I didn't need to worry about financial aid or anything like that, since the trust took care of my expenses.
When I went in to pick up my books the week before classes started, I found out a way to milk the trust for some extra stuff, even though I was only supposed to be able to use the money for school supplies.
It turned out that the college bookstore was a full-fledged Barnes & Noble, so in addition to selling textbooks, they sold novels, coffee, and computer supplies. They also had a variety of clothing with the school's name and mascot on it. I decided as soon as I walked in that all of that counted as “school supplies,” so I started stocking up on everything I could.
By the time I made my way to the register, I had my books for all three classes, a few novels, an excessive amount of pens, printer paper, notebooks, and office supplies, plus a bunch of sodas, bottled water, snacks, and other miscellaneous goodies. And I raided the clothing section for everything I could find, both in my size and in Ari's.
