CJ knew how it had worked in the past: whoever the house fell to moved into it. It was just the way it was done. He wondered if this would be the first occasion in which death did not automatically mean a new occupant. He found Graham in Sal’s office. His brother looked up from some papers spread out on the desk and scowled when he saw who it was.
“Let me guess,” Graham said. “You’ve just filmed yourself kicking a puppy, and they’ll be airing that tonight.”
Instead of responding to the jab, CJ sank into a cushioned chair, regarding Graham on the other side of the desk.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said after a while.
“No? Then whose fault was it?”
“For starters, how about Janet? She was the one who called the police.”
It was typical baiting, and CJ could see that Graham wasn’t in any mood to respond to it.
“Daniel’s already done damage control, so it looks as if this little hiccup won’t cost us too much,” Graham said.
CJ couldn’t have cared less about the little hiccup, much less his henchman’s efforts at damage control. He didn’t care if Graham won the senate seat. He didn’t care who might end up getting the house. He’d come over out of some strange sense of duty and maybe to offer an apology if he thought the occasion warranted one, but he’d found that whatever it was about proximity to family that turned him into a jerk was now doing its job.
Rather than let it sour him completely, he rose from the chair and went over and selected a fine bourbon from a small table in the corner. Once he’d poured drinks for both of them and then reclaimed his seat, they were just two Baxter men doing what their namesakes had done in this room for the last two hundred years.
“What are you doing here?” CJ asked, after enough time had passed for the bourbon to ease the tension a bit. He gestured to the papers on Sal’s desk.
“I’m trying to figure out what to box up and what to shred,” Graham said. As an example, he lifted a single page that had been torn from a notebook and read, “ ‘Waffles for breakfast at 6:17 a.m. Lunch, 11:52 a.m., waffles. Julie brought dinner, 6:39 p.m., pork chops.’ ” He set the page down and moved his hand along a collection of others that appeared to have been torn from the same notebook. “There’s a drawer full of these. Another drawer filled with cans of vegetables, and another filled with hundred-dollar bills.” The chair creaked as he pushed himself away from the desk. “And there’s no telling what he hid around this place while he was still walking.”
This evidence of his grandfather’s declining mental health depressed CJ, yet he found Graham’s surprise puzzling.
“I would have thought you and Dad would have been all over this years ago. You know, everything catalogued—the important stuff put somewhere safe.”
While he wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he said this, it certainly wasn’t the sharp laugh that Graham gave.
“Brother, you’ve got some strange notions about what things are like here,” he said. He tipped the chair back and placed his feet on the desk, heels on his grandfather’s papers, and he studied CJ, curiosity in his eyes. “You don’t really think there’s any mystique attached to the Baxter name, do you?” When CJ didn’t answer, Graham laughed again. “That’s the problem. You’ve spent so much time looking at all the pictures in this place, letting Gramps fill your head with stories, that you actually think this place is like a seat of power—that generations-long plans are hatched here.” He smirked at his brother. “This is just an old house. And Richard is what passes for the typical Baxter these days.”
“Believe me,” CJ said, answering with a smirk of his own. “I have no delusions about what it means to be a Baxter.”
The two sat in silence for a while. CJ could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway. Then it occurred to him to ask, “So why are you cleaning out Sal’s office?”
“Because it’s my office now,” Graham said.
CJ was only mildly surprised. Out of all the possibilities, he supposed this one made the most sense.
“It’ll take a while to get it ready, but we’ll sell my place and move in here. Daniel thought it was a good idea.”
“Keep in mind that Daniel thought my being at your press conference was a good idea too,”