Page 61 of Will Bark for Pizza
“That’s why I’m leaving you everything in the will,” she cackled. “You never ask for money.”
She didn’t have to say the rest. We both heard it.Unlike my ungrateful, entitled daughter.
“You can leave it to Madeline.” It was my typical response.
“So she can give it all to your mother? Fat chance. Madeline’s heart’s in the right place, but her actions are a bit misguided. Heard she’s been trying to con you into letting your folks live in one of your Richmond rentals.”
“Yeah,” I said on a heavy sigh. I didn’t bother to ask how she heard that. Maybe Kyle filled her in.
“You’re not letting them?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“Good. Doesn’t do any good to enable people whowouldn’t lift a damn finger to help themselves, much less anyone else.”
Though Nana sounded heartless, she’d tried as much as I did to help my parents. She spent a great deal more money doing it, too.
“It’s too bad,” Nana said, sounding as though she meant it. “Your mother could have had such a different life, but she had to go and get mixed up with that drunk.” She never referred to my dad asmy dad, for which I was grateful. “Ruined her whole life. But not my circus, not my monkeys. Not anymore. I bailed her out of jail once. She didn’t learn her lesson.”
Her comment sparked a thought from my earlier lunch conversation.
“Slightly off topic, but do you know any good private investigators?”
“What do you need a PI for? You in some kind of hot water?”
I instantly regretted my question, but I knew better than to weasel out of the answer now. “No, nothing like that.”
“You trying to get the four-one-one on that redhead from the lake before you go and get mixed up with her?”
It shouldn’t surprise me that she remembered that very brief conversation. I avoided that topic entirely.
“The old manager for the bookstore I’m buying stole a bunch of money and took off south of the border. It’s the reason the owner is liquidating. They haven’t found her.”
“I thought you were buying the building.”
“I am.”
“Sounds like you’re trying to buy a business, too.”
“I don’t think it’s for sale.”
And even if it were, what the hell did I know about running a bookstore? Not a damn thing. The only thing worse than the bookstore going out of business, per Joe’s decision, was if some idiot decided to buy it and ran it immediately into the ground. I didn’t need to be that idiot.
“You can’t get emotionally invested, Beck.”
“I know.”
But I tasted the lie, and it tasted like lake water, iced coffee and, unsurprisingly, a little bit like dog breath.
Until moving to Bluebell Springs, I did a solid job ofnotgetting emotionally invested with my investment properties. I always offered a fair price for any property I acquired, and I hired the best property managers to ensure my tenants were well taken care of. But the hometown of my closest friends and their family was a far cry from a city where everyone could easily become invisible if they wanted.
I was learning, very quickly, thatnotgetting emotionally invested was the wrong way to go about things here.
“This about a woman?”
“What? No.”
“Fuck. It is, isn’t it?”
