Page 17 of On the Line

“Lauren.” The way I say her name, soft but chiding, she knows. She knows what I’m going to say next. “You know this industry. What does it take for someone to carry major endorsements into retirement?”

Silence.

“Name recognition,” she says softly. “Brand partnerships. Product endorsements.”

Josh was a well-known skier at one point in his career, but he waited to retire until his career was dwindling. And he never had the name recognition that some US skiers achieve, so when his endorsement contracts were up, most of the brands didn’t renew. He understood that’s just how it goes.

“He did have a few small endorsements, still.” But clearly not what he’d led her to believe.

“Okay, so along with that, I’ve learned a few things that don’t make sense with the trust.”

I’d read that thing cover to cover when Josh sent it to originally, and again on the plane on the way out to Utah for the funeral. It was straightforward and solid. “Like what?”

“Well, the short version is, Josh borrowed half the money for our home from his parents, then just a few months ago he took out a reverse mortgage on our house for the other half of the home value. Which means I pretty much have zero equity in this house.”

Well shit.

“And apparently we now own a house in Boston,” she says, then pauses, “well, Brookline, actually. But that house isn’t in the trust.”

“How did you figure this all out?”

She explains about finding the mortgage statement in the PO Box, then the convoluted process of reviewing their tax returns only to find out they paid property taxes on a second property, going through papers she found hidden in Josh’s office closet, and eventually tracking down the deed for a house here in Massachusetts.

“I just ... I can’t imagine how he’d pull all the equity out of our house without telling me. Or how he used that money to buy a new house, also without telling me? Or how he did this while our house was in the trust?”

I stand and start pacing the living room because I can’t sit still while I’m talking about my former client doing something so underhanded and dishonest.

“I don’t know the ins and outs of estate law, but I’m sure it’s possible to remortgage a property that’s in a trust. The point of the trust is to protect the assets after death, not to prevent you from accessing those assets while still alive. But why would he buy a house in Boston?”

She sighs, but it isn’t an unhappy sound. “I’d been saying I wanted to move back to Boston for months. And it seems like maybe he was planning this really big surprise to give me exactly what I wanted.”

“Was Josh the type to plan a surprise this huge?”

Behind me, I hear Audrey come back from putting Graham to sleep, and she and Jules are talking in hushed tones.

“Yeah, he loved grand gestures. The bigger, the better. But this is ... I don’t know how to explain it. Like on the one hand, he was planning to give me what he knew I needed. And on the other hand, there were some enormous secrets he was keeping, and that feels wrong.” She exhales, and I can picture the tears rolling down her face.

I wonder what she means that moving to Boston was what she “needed,” but I don’t feel like it’s my place to ask, or that she’d tell me even if I did.

“It doesn’t mean anything was wrong,” I tell her as I slide the glass door to our backyard open and step out onto the brick landing, because I don’t want my sisters eavesdropping on this call any more than they already have. We don’t normally keep secrets from each other, but these are Lauren’s secrets, not mine. “He probably just wanted to surprise you with the house. Maybe he was going to give this to you as an anniversary gift?”

Do I wish I didn’t have their anniversary date memorized? Yes. But did I spend months looking at it stuck to my fridge with a magnet, debating whether to attend? Also yes. Ultimately, I declined, because I know a thing or two about self-preservation.

She lets out a sound I can only describe as a strangled sob. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she practically whispers. “He’s left me with no assets except a house in Boston I didn’t even know about.”

“I’ll help you figure it out,” I tell her, even as I tell myself to shut the hell up. But I know I can be the support she needs, and this is what I agreed to when I said I’d be the executor of this trust, wasn’t it? “Given all this new info, do you think it makes sense to move out here?”

My entire body hums, the blood rushing through my veins at a ridiculously fast pace, at the idea of having her back in my city. She’s just lost her husband. She’s in no place to be thinking about me the way I’m thinking about her.

“Yeah, probably. I was already seriously considering it, and this feels like the universe—or Josh, maybe—sending me a message that it’s the right decision.” There’s the briefest pause, then she asks, “Did you really mean what you said about helping me figure all this out?”

“As a general rule, I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

She sighs, and I know she’s holding back comments she might have about our past.

“Do you think you could swing by and look at the house for me?” she asks. “I’d ask Paige, but she’s been here for over a week, and she’s heading back to Boston to basically repack her suitcase and leave on a business trip. I don’t think I could ask her to squeeze this in too.”

“Sure. Send me the address and I’ll swing by and take a look.”

---