Page 6 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door
I sit, albeit carefully. Blazer adjusted. Ankles crossed. “I love it.” I take a sip and offer a smile. I’m getting myself all in a knot, but I don’t yet know why. “Now, what can I do for you, Ms. Thompkins?”
“Call me Ashlyn,” she says. “And you might not be able to do anything. But you might know who can.”
Every mental gear in my brain starts turning. I brace for the worst: fraud, misappropriation, municipal funds mysteriouslyrerouted into someone’s hot tub renovation. I’ve seen it before. Well, read about it. And filed three color-coded contingency binders just in case.
“Do you know anything about the history of Maple Falls?” she asks.
My response is automatic. “I work with your father.”
After releasing a loud laugh, she says, “So, you know everything there is to know.”
“Pretty much.”
In fact, I probably know more than I should. I’ve read decades of dusty tax ordinances and scanned so many handwritten council meeting notes that I dream in cursive.
She leans in and lowers her voice. “Victor MacDonald’s supposed heir has been found, and he wants to claim his inheritance.”
I nearly choke on my cider.
The words sit there in the space between us, casual as can be, like she just told me she’d adopted a goldfish or switched to oat milk. My pulse spikes.
Victor MacDonald. The name is practically folklore. He’s the founder, the benefactor, the legend people like to drop in fundraising speeches and old-timey tour brochures. The man owned half of this town. And now someone claiming to be his heir has crawled out of the woodwork? I try to do the math. The man died ages ago. There’s no way?—
“How can his heir do that?” I ask. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations or something?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. All I know is that we need some legal advice—fast.”
“What does your father say?”
“My dad is… um… well.” She closes her eyes, her lips moving like she’s debating whether or not to keep talking. She opens them and says quietly, “My dad is out of town withmy mom. I told him I’d cover for him. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s gone.”
Are you kidding me?“Why?”
“He claims he doesn’t want anyone to feel abandoned by him, but it’s my guess he doesn’t want to face questions regarding why he’s gone away. He’s been ignoring my mom since he became mayor and he’s trying to convince her not to leave him.”
My mind goes full tilt. This is my nightmare: a town operating on verbal agreements and good vibes, with enough procedural gaps to drive a logging truck through. Land rights, property inheritance, zoning laws—my head fills with the thousand ways this could go sideways. And then it lands on the biggest, ugliest possibility of all:
This heir could own the entire downtown and more.
The café. The rink. The mayor’s office.
Happy Horizons.
The cider loses its sweetness all of a sudden.
“This is why I like numbers so much,” I mutter. “People are complicated. Numbers aren’t. Take your parents’ relationship. Your father thinks he’s doing the right thing for the town, but he’s not there for your mother. Numbers aren’t so nuanced. They just are what they are.”
Ashlyn excuses herself to say hello to someone, and I’m left alone with cold cider and my thoughts.
Think. Analyze. Don’t spiral.I sit back, trying to will my pulse to be reasonable.
Except this isn’t just a property issue or another town disaster I can spreadsheet into submission.
This is personal.
Maple Falls might be small and quirky and more than a little obsessed with ice sports, but it’s also the first place I feltlike I could breathe after everything fell apart. Afterheleft me behind.
Paul. I haven’t said his name out loud in over a year.
