As soon as I turned seventeen I started talking about visiting my aunt in Jewel and my father didn’t overtly oppose me in the least. He told me I would be an adult soon and he didn’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to see her if I wanted even if I wasn’t eighteen yet. He told me he would help with arrangements and get me her number and things and then a few weeks later he asked me to follow him in his study and told me she had had a stroke and had passed.
I wanted to attend the funeral, but he said it had already been held. I wanted to visit her tombstone, but he told me she was cremated and scattered somewhere in the Rocky Mountain National Park.
I still cannot believe the degree of cold-hearted assholishness my father must possess to have done such a thing, and only for money no less.
Back then, I was toying with the idea of starting emancipation procedures early on rather than wait around for when I would leave to attend UNF, but I was too struck by my aunt’s passing and I didn’t want to be away from my sister.
Alle is an adorable child and doesn’t take after her parents one bit. We are very close, though it’s been mostly on a virtual level, save a few visits for the holidays, because when I turned eighteen my dad moved to Tennessee for work.
We hardly ever see each other. Though lately, Lance had started making overtures to fix our relationship, I’m guessing because Melania is slowly transitioning out of their marriage, according to Alle.
I had a mind of accepting those overtures for my sister’s sake, but then a month ago my phone rang with the most incredible news and things changed again.
Right now I’m so mad at Lance that if I don’t ever see him again it’ll be too soon, though I’m trying very very hard to move past the pain and to only see the wonderful opportunity my aunt left me.
My aunt’s lawyer, Mr. Beck, reached out and told me everything about Lance’s lies.
I couldn’t speak for five minutes when he shocked the hell out of me by telling me that my eighty-nine-year-old aunt had passed away a little over two months ago and left me all of her belongings, including the Snowdrift Lodge in Jewel, meaning she had been quite alive for the last nine years despite what Lance had said.
Mr. Beck helped me put things together. I immediately confronted my father expecting an apology, but he only made excuses so now we’re completely estranged.
When I asked the lawyer why I hadn’t been notified of my aunt’s passing before, he told me he didn’t know he was supposed to. He was in my aunt’s confidence but she never spoke of me. I guess it was too painful for her, knowing that her only niece didn’t want to have anything to do with her —apparently, she had reached out over the years and had been rebuffed by Lance who told her I was the one who didn’t want to see her.
As she got old, my aunt had decommissioned her staff and no longer offered accommodations to guests at her B&B, unless it was a special request of some type. She had, however, retained the service of a lady whom she considered a friend. The lawyer told me this friendly lady, Michaela, helped her out on a daily basis and she must have known my aunt was planning to leave me everything. So, when Sylvianne passed, she destroyed the will and forged a new one that listed her as the sole beneficiary.
She didn’t know that he was aware of my aunt’s real intentions and had a copy of the will himself.
It took a while for the court and for authorities to establish which one of the two wills was a fake and that’s why he didn’t contact me until a month ago when the forged will was in the process of being impugned and he needed my authorization to proceed on my behalf. Which I gave.
So now, despite the pain and all the lies I’ve been told in my life, I own this beautiful mansion in a town that I’ve been too grieved to visit but I’ve always loved with my whole heart.
There was no way I would ever sell, despite the many offers that have been hitting me in the last few weeks from local businessmen.
Mr. Beck told me my aunt’s dream was to see the B&B up and running once again under my management and even if I think it’s a bit daunting —I don’t have the first clue about how to run a hotel, even a small one—, I’ve decided to take this challenge on.
There’s this little lovely two-bedroom log cabin on the premises of the lodge where my aunt used to live when the B&B was open. It’s just adorable and it’s pretty much an autonomous fully fitted apartment and that’s where I will be staying as I coordinate the work that needs to be done on the mansion.
My plan is to keep working as a graphic designer and run the administrative side of things for the B&B while I leave the day-to-day operations to a new staff that will actually know what they’re doing. I firmly believe that the first step of any new business, either you know how to run it or not, is to hire people that know the trade. I’ve been in touch with old friends from town, people that I trust –especially Sheriff Scott and his wife, Livvie, as they were like family to my aunt– and everybody is excited at the idea of finally seeing the Snowdrift full of guests again.
I can’t wait to get there.
I feel like a little kid at Christmas for the first time in years, this really feels like the right move to make.
My Nikon’s done charging, I pick it up and zip it in its case before I place it in my large messenger bag.
I’m going to snap some pretty unforgettable pictures with this baby, I already know.
There’s one last suitcase open on the naked mattress in the middle of my bedroom, one last box full of things I’ve discarded it’s on the floor right below it and there’s one last item I haven’t decided what to do with yet.
I take a breath and pick up Wyatt’s Ranger T-shirt, my fingers stroke the soft, faded army-green cotton, threadbare after many washing over the years.
I still remember the acute pain I felt after I threw it in the laundry that first time. Wyatt’s scent was completely gone from it anyway by then, but the memories had lingered on, threaded with every fiber. They still do.
There are hateful days when I wish I could forget it all, but most of the time I still catch myself longing for something, longing for him. I can’t help it.
I can still see him in my mind’s eye as he takes the hem of his tee and rolls it up and away from his massive, sculpted chest, then pushes it over my head, pulling me to him and kissing my hair, asking me to wear it every night to bed until he could come back for me and hold me again, but our love wasn’t to the edge of eternity after all.
A single tear slides down my cheek at the vision and my heart lurches in my chest.
I squeeze the t-shirt in my hands, my eyes darting from the open suitcase to the discard box and back again and even after all these years I still don’t know what to do.
Chapter 4
WYATT
I turn on my back and open my eyes as my hand absentmindedly shoots to my chest to rub at the familiar ache, my fingers digging into my skin to try and stop it.
It’s pointless though: there’s no stopping it ever.
I’ve been living with this strange, phantom ache for years. It’s always the first thing I feel when I wake up and the last when I go to bed and during the day several times, it kinda springs on me for no apparent reason.