The Inheritance

by Michael Phillips

  “So your grandfather died—your other grandfather—and you were able to attend the junior college from what he left you, before you got the university scholarship.”

  Loni nodded. “My grandparents sold off some of his tools and furniture. There were a few things of Grandfather Tulloch’s that remained shoved in the back of our storeroom that they said belonged to me. They were scrupulous about the money earned from his possessions. It was all saved for me.”

  “What kind of things were in storage? Maybe there are clues there to where he came from.”

  “I was young when he died,” said Loni, “eleven or twelve, I think . . . maybe thirteen. I wasn’t interested. I was plagued by my own issues at the time. It never really registered, This is my grandfather who just died. When you’re young, you’re not thinking about your heritage. I didn’t think about the implications. Now I would give anything to know more about his side of the family—especially his daughter, my mother.”

  Loni paused, a faraway expression in her eyes.

  “There was one interesting piece,” she said, “now that I think about it. Probably two or three years later, my grandfather was talking to some customers. He asked me to go into his storeroom and bring out a folding step stool and book ladder he had just finished but hadn’t yet oiled and stained. I couldn’t find it at first. I wandered deeper into the back of the storeroom. It was mostly full of junk and old lumber. Far at the back were the few things we still had from Grandfather Tulloch—a dresser and a table, boxes, some tools. Then a gorgeous roll-top desk caught my eye—English oak, stained dark. It wasn’t tremendously old, probably mid-twentieth century. A small key was protruding from the keyhole. The top wasn’t locked. I rolled it up, and a sense of mystery and antiquity swept over me.”

  “What was inside?” asked Maddy excitedly.

  “It was strewn with papers, files, business things mostly, a few books . . . it all looked completely uninteresting to me.”

  “Did you look at any of it?”

  “Not really. A minute later I closed the desk and continued my search for the step stool.”

  “There may have been clues in those papers. Imagine—old family records!”

  “Maybe . . . I don’t know.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “I don’t know that either,” replied Loni. “My grandparents may have sold it by now. I’m sure it would have brought a good price.”

  “This letter you received could have something to do with all that.”

  “Maybe. Who knows?” shrugged Loni. “But remember, I hate Scotland. Whatever this so-called cottage is all about, I don’t want it. Maddy, you said you were Scottish—I’ll give it to you.”

  “You can’t give it to me!”

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Okay then, you said you wanted to go to Scotland—your roots and all that—”

  “After the way you described it,” laughed Maddy, “I think I’ve changed my mind!”

  “Maybe the weather will be better for you. Think of it as a vacation. You fly over there, sell the place for whatever you can get. What can a cottage out in the middle of nowhere be worth? If some old man lived in it all his life, it’s probably falling apart. Whatever you can sell it for, we’ll split the proceeds.”

  “I couldn’t do that!” Maddy was laughing and shaking her head. “I’m too busy to take a vacation. And the letter said you have to claim the property in person within two weeks. Otherwise it goes to someone else.”

  “Then whoever they are can have it,” said Loni. She crumpled the letter and tossed it into the can beside Maddy’s desk. “Whoever’s next in line is welcome to it.”

  Maddy did not reply. She grew thoughtful, then looked deep into Loni’s eyes. “Do you remember when I first approached you at that seminar?” she asked. “Do you remember what I told you?”

  “How could I forget?” replied Loni. “That day changed my life.”

  “What did I say?”

  “That you felt you and I were to work together, that our meeting was destined, I think you said.”

  “I meant it. I’ve never doubted it since. You have become everything I knew you would. And looking back . . . I was just getting started myself. I wasn’t much older than you!” Again Maddy paused. “So I am going to tell you something now, Loni, and I mean it as earnestly as I meant what I said back then. I don’t think you can take this opportunity lightly. This is your destiny now, Loni. You have always said you have no roots. Well, maybe you do. Maybe this is the key to finding them. You have to see this through.”

  61

  Decision

  The letter from Scotland worked on Loni for the rest of the day. So did Maddy’s earnest admonition. She made several telephone calls to clients. She set up a meeting at three with a major investment group. She and Maddy were involved for the rest of the afternoon. Throughout it all, however, Loni was distracted.

  As she was getting ready to leave for the day, her thoughts flitted to the wastebasket beside Maddy’s desk. Maddy had remained behind in the conference room with their clients. Loni went across to Maddy’s office and rummaged through the container. Hoping no one would see her, she clutched at the letter she had so unceremoniously wadded up earlier. Quickly she stood and walked out of the office.

  She reached home by 7:30 p.m. By then she was obsessed with the letter. By ten o’clock she could think of nothing else. She read it over another four times, trying in vain to torture some meaning from between the lines she hadn’t noticed before. But it was no more or less than what it appeared.

  An old man in Scotland had died.

  She had inherited his house . . . his “cottage.”

  All the doubts and fears and uncertainties of her childhood rushed back like a flood. She tried to read, tried to watch TV, then finally went to bed. She was still staring at the ceiling at two o’clock.

  Maybe the little voice that had spoken from her mirror had been right. Maybe she didn’t know who she really was.

  After a night dozing but occasionally, by five o’clock Loni could stand it no longer.

  Thirty minutes later, after a bracing cold shower to jar her senses back to life, and holding a double-shot espresso from her coffee machine, she sat down with a world atlas in her lap to find the Shetlands. There were the Orkney Islands just off the northern tip of Scotland. The west coast of Scotland was filled with dozens of islands of all sizes and shapes, but—

  It couldn’t be! There were the Shetlands in the middle of the ocean . . . hundreds of miles farther north!

  “Goodness!” Loni whispered. It was worse than she imagined! The Shetland Islands were halfway to the North Pole!

  That confirmed it!

  Loni closed the atlas with a renewal of her resolve of the day before. All this fretting was a waste of energy. She had no intention of claiming ownership of a cottage that far in the middle of nowhere. Whales Reef, for heaven’s sake. Even the name was desolate. It was probably surrounded by icebergs and populated with penguins. Or were penguins in the South Pole? It didn’t matter—ice was ice!

  It was time to put this cottage business out of her mind for good.

  She went to her computer, opened her email, and set her fingers to the keyboard.

  Dear Mr. MacNaughton, she began.

  After a great deal of thought, I have decided—

  Loni’s hands stilled.

  She waited a moment . . . then suddenly she was typing again. The next words that spilled out on her computer screen were not what she had planned.

  —that I will make arrangements immediately to fly to Scotland. When I arrive I will decide what to do regarding the inheritance you speak of. I will let you know the details of my itinerary when I have it booked and make arrangements to meet you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Alonnah Tulloch Ford

  Loni leaned back in her chair and read over the brief message again. She paused a few seconds longer before
clicking Send.

  62

  Reflections on a Cherished Heritage

  WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS

  Only the gravel crunching beneath his feet broke the silence as David Tulloch walked toward the black wrought-iron gate that led into the parish church cemetery of Whales Reef.

  He had just returned from Lerwick where he had learned, at long last, the details for the resolution of his uncle’s estate. The church was his first stop upon his return.

  A crowd was gathered watching for the ferry. He smiled to himself, realizing that word must have leaked out about his errand. If they knew what had taken him into the city, the whole village was probably awaiting his report. He waved to those crowded around the dock. But they would have to wait a few minutes longer. He had to collect his thoughts first.

  It was a small church that rose behind him. Constructed of gray stone blocks, it was more imposing vertically than horizontally. The austere Protestant structure had been laid out in the eighteenth century in a plain rectangle without attention to architectural flair. Its four walls gave way to steep slates, which in turn yielded to a narrowing pyramidal steeple that exploded skyward. A simpler yet more dramatically artistic representation of man’s quest to reach the Almighty could scarcely be imagined.

  In a location such as this, where sea mists, driving rains, and incessant winds were the norm, a steeple must be strongly anchored to keep from being battered to bits. This one was. It had survived, with repairs, for three centuries. Its topmost spire, however, was often shrouded in fog or slanting torrents, thus providing an even more fitting symbol of that unknowable and veiled Presence to whom it pointed. Its disappearance into the nebulous unseen heavens, even if only fifty feet above the ground, created a numinous aura of mystery in keeping with its avowed purpose.

  The cemetery gate creaked on rusting hinges and swung open to David’s touch. He passed into the ancient graveyard. The cemetery had been here longer than the present church building.

  David made his way through the maze of stones and finally slowed in front of an irregular array of markers, headstones, and slabs representing the patrimony of the proud family name of Tulloch.

  The shadow of the steeple tip fell fittingly across a large marble stone, the centerpiece of the family plot. He looked down and read the name familiar to all islanders: Ernest Tulloch, 1875–1953. The man known as “the Auld Tulloch” was the last to claim possession of both titles, laird and chief.

  David’s eyes drifted to his right and left. Heedless of the significance of steeple and its shadow—pointing at once to the heavens above whence came life and to the ground where all earthly lives reached their final end—he took in the names upon each of a half-dozen moss-encrusted stone markers.

  To the right of Earnest was buried his first wife, Elizabeth Clark, 1880–1904. Nearby, Wallace Tulloch, 1902–1976, the second son who had inherited the lairdship in place of his elder brother, had been laid to rest with his family to Elizabeth’s right.

  A short distance away rose a smaller stone for the younger sister, the Auld Tulloch’s third born, Delynn Tulloch, 1904–1977, buried beside her husband, the daughter through whom her great-grandson Hardar Tulloch had based his recent legal claim as the rightful Tulloch heir.

  David’s reflections now wandered further and came to rest upon the marker of his own great-grandfather Leith Tulloch, 1909–1983, the Auld Tulloch’s youngest and last born to whom the chieftainship had been bestowed, son of Ernest’s second wife, Sally Lipscomb, 1885–1977, who rested to the old man’s left.

  Of the Auld Tulloch’s four children, the name of his eldest, Brogan, was conspicuously missing from this final silent family gathering.

  The newest grave behind the church belonged to Wallace’s son, David’s own great-uncle Macgregor Tulloch, gone from the earth less than a year.

  Beside and around the stones that had first commanded his attention, spread out behind the church, David now glanced about the cemetery where the names of other Tullochs, and MacDonalds before them, were gathered as silent witnesses to a storied past with origins on the mainland of Scotland and on Shetland itself.

  It was indeed a proud family history and tradition, though the fissure that had occurred in the family early in the last century remained an unresolved puzzle.

  Already the sundial of the steeple moved on. Its shadow slowly rose in the sun’s descending arc. It pointed now to no Tulloch. Time and destinies, fortunes and ancestries, moved on as inexorably as the sun crossing the heavens. The outline of the spire would continue to move throughout the afternoon and into the evening. In another hour it would cast its shadow upon the rock wall at the back of the churchyard. And still it would creep forward, lengthening like time itself, inching farther and farther, until suddenly in a moment it would leap the wall and be gone, the point of its silhouette disappearing into the great beyond.

  Perhaps the shadow of the spire told the story of the Tulloch legacy on Whales Reef. Had the season of Tullochs come to an end? The sundial had pointed briefly to their names just as fortune had smiled on their lives.

  But the dial moved on. It pointed now far away, to one yet unknown to the islanders of Whales Reef upon whom the birthright had now come to rest.

  David drew in a sigh and glanced around him one last time. The dynasty of his branch of the family seemed about to end. Another era had dawned. The new laird of Whales Reef would be no Tulloch at all, nor a Shetlander.

  Not even a Scot.

  Not even British.

  Ever since his boyhood encounter with the self-proclaimed prophetess Sister Grace, David had struggled to rid himself of antipathy toward Americans. All the youthful emotions stirred up by those days seemed determined to rise again. Was history destined to repeat itself? Was another outsider—yet another American who knew nothing of the island’s history and heritage and cared nothing for its people—about to bring unwanted changes to this island?

  What would the future bring to Whales Reef? And to him?

  Only a moment more he stood. He had to come here first, to connect with his past, his roots, his forebears. He had needed to sense their presence as he readied to hand over their legacy to another.

  But right now the villagers were waiting for him.

  63

  Brusque Interruption

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Morning in the U.S. capital was just revving up to full speed. Though her own encouragement had tipped the scales toward Loni’s decision to fly to Scotland, Madison Swift was already missing her assistant. And it was only Loni’s first day out of the office! What would she do for the next five days? Hire a temp, Maddy wondered. But arranging for one would take time she could ill afford.

  A loud voice in the outer offices interrupted Maddy’s thoughts.

  A few seconds later her door flew open, and heavy booted steps echoed across the floor. “Hey, little lady!” boomed a grating western drawl, “you the gal called Swift?”

  Maddy looked up to see a giant of a man staring down at her. He was the perfect caricature of a bigger-than-life Texan. He looked more like oil than cows, with a huge white cowboy hat and string tie to go with the size thirteen boots.

  “I am Madison Swift,” said Maddy. “And you would be—?”

  “McLeod, ma’am. Jimmy Joe McLeod.”

  “Do you have an appointment, Mr. McLeod? I don’t seem to recall—”

  “Nope, no appointment. Sorry for barging in like this, but I got business that can’t wait. I’m looking for a filly goes by the name of Ford. Didn’t catch the first name. But they told me you and she’s tighter’n a couple—” He stopped abruptly and let his eyes drift over Maddy for a second. “Say, you and she ain’t a couple of them modern city women, if you get my drift?”

  Swallowing her indignation at the blustering lout’s manner, Maddy struggled to preserve her calm. “I don’t see that that is any of your business, Mr. McLeod,” she said, rising and standing behind her desk.

  “Ain�
�t no never-mind to me. Heck, to each his own, I say. But I gotta find this gal Ford.”

  “Miss Ford is my assistant,” said Maddy. “She is not here.”

  “Where is she then?”

  “Out of town.”

  “Dang! I gotta find her. Just tell me how I can get in touch with her then.”

  “Look, Mr. McLeod—I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before. You come storming in here without the courtesy of a knock and interrupt my work. Then you expect me to divulge information—”

  “Hey, whoa . . . back up a piece, little lady. Put that six-gun of yours in its holster.”

  Maddy’s eyes flashed. “I’m not your little lady,” she shot back. “Now I am going to ask you calmly to leave my office before I have to call building security.”

  “Whoa—you are a feisty one!” said McLeod, grinning as he looked down on Maddy’s five-foot-two frame. “No need to get riled up. Just tell me where Ford has gone.”

  “Overseas,” replied Maddy. “Her plane left an hour ago.”

  McLeod swore loudly. He thought a moment. “Where’s she off to? You got the name of her hotel?” he added.

  “You’ll get nothing further from me. Now, do I have to call security?”

  “Forget it, Ms. Swift,” said McLeod, swinging off his hat and taking a low bow. “If she ain’t here, I got no more reason to hang around. Much obliged.”

  Smoke coming out her ears, Maddy stared after the Texan while he departed as unceremoniously as he had come.

  64

  The Wait Is Over

  WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS

  David left the churchyard and walked downhill toward the village. As he went, he reflected on the day’s events, thinking what he would say to the friends, relatives, and lifetime acquaintances awaiting him.