firstborn, Trey, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why you’re taking all this so well. You should be hating me for being on the receiving end of his last will and testament.”
He shrugged and smiled some more, but there was something bruised in his eyes.
“In any other family,” I continued, rolling my eyes at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, “Mom and Dad would leave a nice little bundle of junk for their kids to inherit. A stamp collection. A few picture albums. A time-share in Aruba. Maybe even a dog. But in ours?” I laughed. Then I laughed again, harder.
By the third laugh, I knew I was on the verge of hysterics, so I reeled in the humor and put a lid on the levity. “In our family, Dad leaves, Mom dies, Shell and Trey move on; then Dad dies too and . . .” I wasn’t sure where the tears had come from. They weren’t part of the plan.
I swallowed hard. “Dad dies,” I resumed, “and we inherit what? No—wait. Not we. Just me. What’s up with that? I inherit—me, Shelby Davis—I inherit a condo, a truckload of money, and a four-year-old half sister he had with heaven knows who. Trey,” I said, my voice brimming with incredulous anger, “weak doesn’t begin to cover what I’m feeling—what I’ve been feeling since Dad’s lawyer knocked on my door. I am winded, stunned . . .”
The tears came in earnest then. “I don’t know what to do,” I groaned, leaning into Trey with abject devastation forcing sobs from my constricted lungs. Three weeks of utter desperation burst through my restraint and rained a bruising hail of betrayal, fear, and anguish down on me.
And Trey? Trey remained the person he had always been—my anchor, my defender, my friend. He was the eight-year-old boy who patted my back and dried my tears, the twelve-year-old rescuer who convinced me we’d be fine, the sixteen-year-old knight who promised to make it better, and the thirty-six-year-old champion who persuaded me that this latest assault would not shatter me either. Nothing else my dad had done had managed to destroy me, and this—this aberration both for Trey and for me—would not undo us.
“I need you to keep the condo,” I told him when reality had grown more bearable again. “And we’re splitting the savings. I want you to have a home, Trey. I’ve already got my own and it feels like me. So take this one. Take it just to infuriate him, wherever he is, because he didn’t leave it to you.”
“You make a good case.”
“He was your father too.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“And if this is his last-ditch, posthumous attempt at hurting us, we need to show him that he can’t.”
“I don’t know, Shelby.”
“I do,” I said, and for the first time in forever, I actually felt certain of one thing. “This is a good thing for you, Trey. It’s what you need. And it’s what I need because it’s driving me nuts picturing my brother sleeping in a pantry.”
“I—”
“Shut it, Trey. You’re taking this place off my hands. And that’s it. Done. ‘Signed, sealed, delivered . . .’”
“‘. . . I’m yours.’”
We spent a few moments talking about other things. Another tactic we’d developed in thirtysome years of deliberate denial.
Then Trey came back to the trauma at hand. “So . . . can we talk about this?”
“I thought we just did.”
“No, about Shayla.”
Shayla. “Well, I’ve pawned this place off on you and the money off on an accountant. What do you think? Can I pawn Shayla off on the state of Illinois?”
He didn’t answer. He just looked at me. I suddenly understood what microwave popcorn felt like. He was watching me pop and waiting for me to be finished.
“What do you think I should do?” I asked.
“Be true to yourself.”
“So helpful.”
“I try.”
“And ‘myself’ is . . . ?”
“‘Yourself’ has a good heart. A warm heart. Something you didn’t inherit from our dad.”
Deep breath. “Trey . . . She’s so—”
“You know, there’s a chance—a very small chance—that the old man got a couple things right in his life. The first was marrying Mom. No one else would have put up with him for so long.”
“And the second?”
“Giving his daughter to the best possible person for the job.”
“You mean giving his illegitimate four-year-old daughter to his estranged thirty-five-year-old daughter.”
“Hey, I never said this family didn’t put the fun in dysfunction!” He wandered to the kitchen and started opening cupboards. “And in his defense, it