Daring to Fall

by Shannon Stults

  “Aiden left for the airport early this morning, so breakfast is up to us. I was thinking I could make biscuits like Mom always used to do on Saturdays.”

  Sadie eyed the random-looking pile of ingredients on the island counter between them with a hint of fear and uncertainty.

  “Or we could always go out to get something. We’ll have to be back in time to meet the inspector I scheduled to come look at the house, but we could go to the café in town real quick. I’m overdue to pay Byrdie a visit, and I know how much you love her lemon and blueberry scones.”

  Sadie nodded, taking another sip of tea. “That’s okay. After I shower, I was going to meet Margot and Amber for breakfast and spend the day at the mall in Dublin.”

  Harper’s smile fell. “Oh. But, after the inspector leaves, we’re supposed to go meet with the attorney to hear Grams’s will.”

  “You can go without me. I don’t really want to.”

  Harper pushed her glasses up. “But I thought maybe we could hang out today, spend some time together, and catch up.” She’d barely spent any time with her little sister in the last few days that wasn’t tainted by death and grieving.

  Sadie turned to her. “You don’t have to worry about me, Harper. I know you’ve got a lot of stuff on your plate right now. I’ll be fine. Just go do what you have to do.” She grabbed her glass and turned away. “I’ll be back later tonight.”

  Sadie walked out the kitchen door, her tennis shoes padding their way down the hall and up the stairs.

  “Oh…okay.”

  *

  “Miss Maddox?”

  “Sorry.” Harper snapped to attention, her eyes focusing once again on the small, white-haired man sitting behind the vast mahogany desk. She’d been caught staring at the liver spot on the top of his head again instead of listening. She wasn’t trying to be rude. Mr. Nielson just had one of those voices that always made her zone out. Add to that all the legal jargon, and the fact that she really had to pee, and she could hardly blame herself.

  Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have had those three glasses of sweet tea before she left the house…or the almost liter of it she’d guzzled down alongside her cranberry and orange muffin from Byrdie’s Café just a few doors down.

  After Burt Glarrow, the inspector who’d shown up in the early September heat wearing a sweat-soaked white dress shirt and black slacks, had given her probably the worst news possible—the house needed massive amounts of work she couldn’t afford—she’d started working on a plan to get the house on the market in the next few weeks without making costly repairs, only to be assaulted minutes later with a growling stomach and the painful reminder that she still hadn’t eaten breakfast. With grim determination and a minutely more positive outlook on her situation, she set out to make the best darn biscuits she’d ever had.

  Turned out that baking soda was not the same as baking powder, and water was hardly a good substitute for milk. Oh well, you live and you learn, she’d thought while inhaling her giant muffin outside the door to Mr. Nielson’s law office. And while the nearly lethal amounts of caffeine and sugar were doing a fantastic job distracting her from her mental and emotional exhaustion, they were not making it easy for her to pay attention to the reading of the will.

  Harper’s leg bounced impatiently as she tried to focus on the legal document Mr. Nielson was reading from very slowly and painfully monotoned. She tried not to think about how desperately she wished Sadie were here with her right now. Maybe Harper would feel just a little less lost if she were.

  It was almost hard to believe they’d been so close once upon a time, practically inseparable. But she supposed that was what happened when you lost both your parents in a horrific car crash one cold February morning. Aside from Grams, they’d had no one to turn to or lean on but each other. Both her mom’s parents had died before Harper or Sadie were born, leaving their only child, Molly Maddox, with a small inheritance. It was that inheritance that she and her husband used as a down payment to start up the bed and breakfast in town.

  Harper had loved that B&B almost as much as her parents had. She could still remember the sounds of cheerful chatter as friends and strangers came together under one roof. They’d share stories of places they’d been, adventures they’d had, or the people they’d met. Despite being a small town, the Willow Creek B&B had become a popular spot for tourists and travelers from near and far. The quaint southern town was the perfect getaway for those trying to escape the city life for a few days, and they all came to stay at the B&B.

  When her parents died, the B&B had died with it, along with the influx of city dwellers looking for some much-needed peace and quiet.

  With no aunts or uncles on their dad’s side and their grandpa long since passed, just about everything had gone to the two girls. Of course, being too young to access any of it, what little money they’d received from life insurance had been entrusted to Grams.

  Only now Grams was gone, and Sadie was still only sixteen. That left Harper.

  “Harper.”

  She found Mr. Nielson watching her, waiting. “Crap, sorry. I swear I’m listening.” She adjusted herself in her seat, trying to relieve some of the pain in her bladder. She really needed to stop zoning out so she could finally get to a bathroom and away from this office that smelled like moth balls and old cigars. “Please, keep going.”

  “I’ve finished.”

  She cringed, feeling like the kid in class who’d just been caught sleeping. “Right. So, um, if you could maybe just repeat all that in layman’s terms…”

  Mr. Nielson sat back in his ridiculously high-backed black leather chair and sighed. He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and scratched at his liver spot.

  “As you know, your grandmother was put in charge of the funds while you and Sadie were too young.”

  Harper nodded.

  “All of that passes to you now. Along with everything your grandmother possessed. She’s left everything to be sorted out and divvied between you and Sadie equally. In total, your grandmother’s house, your parents’ B&B—”

  “The B&B?”

  He nodded.

  “Grams never said anything about it. I assumed she sold it or the bank took it or something. Does that mean Grams was still making payments on that house?” she asked with mild panic. If she had, that would mean she and Sadie had even less than they thought.

  Mr. Nielson shook his head. “The B&B property was paid for long before it came into your grandmother’s possession.”

  “Oh.” Well, there was some good news, at least. Maybe if the B&B was still in decent shape, she and Sadie could sell it first. That would be enough to get them the money they would need for the repairs to Grams’s house, and then they could get some decent offers for it.

  “There are also the three life insurance sums,” he went on. “And then there’s the matter of your mother’s inheritance.”

  Harper’s brow creased. “What matter? Mom and Dad used up the inheritance to start the B&B. And their life insurance has to be almost gone by now. Grams and Sadie and I were living off them for thirteen years, not to mention paying for Georgia Tech and med school. If I’ve done my math right, there shouldn’t be all that much left.” The weight of hopelessness was back in her chest.

  “Yes, well, I don’t know how much your grandmother told you, but it seems clear that she was less than forthcoming about your financial state.”

  “Meaning?” Was Harper wrong? Was the money gone already? What would she do then?

  “Meaning the estate left to you is significantly larger in size than you were told.”

  Her heart nearly stopped. “How much larger?”

  “Significantly,” he said again. He searched through his papers before spouting off a number so ridiculously large, Harper wasn’t sure she’d ever heard a number that high spoken aloud in person before.

  She stared at Mr. Nielson, trying to make sense of it.

  And then it hit her.

  “Holy crap!”


  Harper’s voice came out much louder than she’d meant for it to, the last word bouncing off the empty white walls around them. “Sorry,” she whispered, raising her hand to her mouth.

  If Mr. Nielson was right, there was certainly no fear of them running out any time soon. Or, she suspected, ever. “How is that possible?”

  “Well, this does include the values of the trust funds—”

  “Trust funds?” Grams had never said anything about trust funds.

  Mr. Nielson nodded patiently. “Two of them, one in your name and one in Sadie’s. Your parents set them up a long time ago with the majority of your mother’s inheritance. Sadie won’t be able to access her fund until she reaches twenty-five, at your mother’s request. But since your twenty-fifth birthday just passed, you have full access to your fund as well as the rest of your mother’s inheritance, the savings your parents and grandmother have accumulated over the years with accrued interest, your grandmother’s life insurance, and what remains of your parents’ policies, not to mention some very lucrative investments your father made.”

  Harper sat frozen in the chair, her full bladder all but forgotten as she continued to stare at the man.

  “Do you understand all that I’m telling you, Miss Maddox?”

  She fought the overwhelming numbness snaking through her body and forced herself to nod that, yes, she knew what it meant.

  It meant Sadie could go to college anywhere she wanted without any fear or worry about tuition or housing or any other financing. It meant Harper’s fears of debt and bankruptcy were completely unfounded, that she and Sadie would get to live the next several years with the comfort of knowing where their next meal was coming from, where they would lay their heads each night. They could afford the updates to the plumbing and wiring and a new roof and a brand-new air-conditioning unit without worrying about where the money would come from.

  And best of all, it meant they could keep the house. The house they grew up in together with Grams. The house that made them who they were today.

  The house they called home.

  Chapter Five

  Harper sat on the front porch, the evening September breeze a cool, featherlight caress on her skin. She kept replaying the attorney’s words over and over in her head, still struggling to accept that any of it had been real. All those years Harper had stressed over their financial state, diligently running the numbers each month, watching as what she’d believed was the last of their funds grew smaller and smaller. All for nothing.

  Grams had always told Harper not to worry, that her grandmother had everything under control. Still, Harper had secretly kept her own account of all the money that was spent. She’d had no idea that the money she watched slowly disappear was only a tiny fraction of the wealth left in her and Sadie’s names. Harper had tried to figure out why her grandmother would lie to her about it, but so far she’d been unable to focus on anything other than her own shock and immense relief for the last several hours.

  Harper sat up straight as the familiar tan Buick pulled into the driveway, the bright headlights cutting painfully through the thick darkness just outside the reach of the faint porch lights.

  Harper rubbed her hands over her legs, trying to smooth out the nervous prickle of goose bumps that arose over her bare skin. Sadie’s footsteps were muffled by the green grass beneath her flip-flops as she crossed the yard. When she reached the porch steps and took in Harper’s anxious movements, she eyed her sister warily. “What’s going on?”

  Harper pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and patted the empty spot on the step next to her. “I’ve got some news.”

  Sadie’s body went rigid, and her panicked face showed Harper its first hint of real emotion in the last several days.

  “Everything’s okay,” Harper assured her. “I just want to tell you what the attorney said about the will.”

  Sadie’s shoulders relaxed, and she took a seat on the spot Harper had indicated. Harper turned to Sadie and took a deep breath before delving into everything Mr. Nielson had told her—well, everything he’d said once Harper started paying attention. She told her about the inheritance, how it was much more than either of them had been led to believe, along with the two trust funds and the money still left from three life insurance policies.

  “Why would Grams lie to us?” Sadie asked. Her expression was a mix of emotions Harper couldn’t begin to decipher. Seven years ago, she would have known exactly what Sadie was thinking, and she wished now that she’d never let her baby sister become such a mystery to her.

  Harper shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she was worried we’d get lazy and spoiled if we knew just how much we had.”

  “So what does this mean, exactly?” Sadie’s fingers fidgeted with the hem of her flowy, pink top. “Does this mean we can upgrade the Buick? And I can get some more clothes for school?”

  Harper nearly laughed. “Sadie, we’re not just talking about going to the mall or buying a new car kind of money. This is getting a PhD at Harvard kind of money. Buying a mansion in Beverly Hills kind of money. We could travel around the world for the rest of our lives without worrying about a dime.”

  “Really?” Sadie’s lips curled into a small smile, and then it was gone again. “I’ve always wanted to go to Europe, but I knew with Grams…” Her lip trembled. Harper took her hand.

  “Hey, it’s okay. I miss Grams, too. So much. She was the only mother we’ve had for thirteen years, and it’s almost impossible to imagine a life without her in it anymore.” Harper knew all too well how the pain of loss never really went away. But you learned to work around it until the pain was just a normal part of you. Sometimes it was just the smallest ache that you could push away to the back of your mind, and other times it was an overwhelming agony that forced its way unbidden into your chest.

  Harper’s mind drifted to a cool April night in a dark, abandoned room, tears and pain pouring out of her while a sturdy pair of arms comforted her.

  “I know you’re sad,” she said as she held Sadie’s hand in hers, “but it’s okay to be excited about this, too.”

  “It is?”

  Harper nodded. “You should have seen me at the attorney’s office. I was a nervous wreck. As far as I knew we had almost no money left. I’d already started working on a plan to sell the house just to scrape up enough money to get us through the next year or two. But when Mr. Nielson told me just how much there was, you can’t even imagine the relief. It was like I could breathe again.”

  “Wait.” Sadie’s hand left Harper’s, and she saw that her sister’s eyes had taken on a sharp-edged glare. “You were going to sell the house? Our house?”

  “I—we needed the money, Sadie. At least, I thought we did. I don’t have a job, and I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to find around here. It was the only thing I could think of to make sure we had enough to live off of.”

  “Were you even going to talk to me about it?” she asked as she sprang to her feet. “Or were you going to wait until after you packed up our entire lives and moved us across town?”

  “Of course I was going to tell you. I just didn’t want you to have to worry about it until I figured out a plan.”

  “You didn’t think I could handle it?” Sadie accused, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Harper adjusted her glasses as she stood. “No. I just—you’re only sixteen. I didn’t want you to have to deal with that kind of burden. You don’t need this kind of weight on your shoulders.”

  Sadie rolled her eyes. “That’s rich.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” She shook her head. “Clearly, you don’t think I should have any say in my life or where I want to live. Not that you really know anything about me or what I’ve been doing for the last three years. But, hey, I’m only sixteen so what do I really know?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Sadie ran up the steps toward the front door but swung back around before she reach
ed it. “I’m going to bed, unless there are any other life-changing decisions you’ve made that you need to tell me about.”

  Harper stood silently, not knowing what to say or how she’d gone from comforting Sadie to getting yelled at in less than a minute.

  “Great.” Sadie turned and wrenched the door open, storming into the foyer and up the stairs without looking back.

  DAY 14

  “You having fun yet, Midge?” Cowboy asked over the playful music as he spun her away from him again. Her dress fluttered out around her, giving him a flash of her short, yet toned, milky-white thighs.

  “I’m getting a little dizzy.”

  “I tend to have that effect on women,” he said with a wink. “It’s the combination of your sexual desire for me and my killer smile.”

  The second Harper stopped spinning, he tugged on her hand. She came twirling back until she was flush against him.

  “Yes, that must be it,” she said, her cheeks looking even paler than usual.

  “Might also have something to do with the four glasses of champagne you had, but my money’s on the first one.”

  “Well, whatever it is, you better stop spinning me or I might yak all over you.”

  His laugh rang out over the other voices around them. “Charming. I’ll try to tone it down.” He was just about to swing her around a bit more gently when the music slowed. Several couples around them met in an intimate embrace as they swayed slowly with the song.

  Harper nodded over to their table and moved to leave the dance floor as several bodies filled in the space around them. But Cowboy didn’t feel like stopping just yet and instead pulled her closer to him, leading her body to the gentle music. She hesitated only a second before she placed her free hand on his shoulder. In her high heels, the top of her head came just up to his chin.

  Two puzzle pieces.

  “You never answered my question.” His hand held hers firmly while his other found the curve of her lower back. “Are you having a good time?”

  She nodded, her blue eyes bright in the light of the reception hall.