CHAPTER TWO
Zane
I sat alone in the cramped law office of Mitchell Worthington, a name that sounded far more impressive than the man who bore it was. The place reminded me of everything I hated about that Podunk town in Vermont. It was musty, old, and much like the ancient and yellowed computer on the lawyer’s desk, useless. Other than maple syrup and leaves, it didn’t offer anything to the average American, and I was well beyond average.
My mother’s lawyer walked in and gingerly sat down in his office chair. An old man with white hair and eyebrows a horned owl might balk at, it took him a full minute to get settled and finally look across the desk at me.
“Mr. Gilford, I’d like to start by extending my sympathies. Your mother was a good woman, and I’m sorry she’s passed. It seems like just yesterday that she came here looking for an attorney to represent her business interests. She was a glowing woman who brought joy to those around her. She will be sorely missed.”
I nodded because I had to. He and I both knew I wasn’t there for some therapy session.
Not getting the reaction he wanted, he continued. “Right, okay, let me see. Yes, let me look at some of the paperwork here.” Thumbing through the stack of papers, he said, “Yes…okay, that’s what I need.”
Instead of actually telling me what I wanted to hear, he sat silently reading over the document for nearly a minute before looking up at me. “Well, Mr. Gilford, you’ll be pleased to know she’s left you everything. However, there is one caveat, and I feel I must prepare you by saying that you are not going to like it.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. There was always something else when it came to my mother. Even in death, she had a way of making things annoying, like requiring me to meet her lawyer in person for this crap when I should have been back enjoying my life in California, not in Vermont where I could already smell the stench of old people and hipsters all over me.
“Fine. What’s the caveat?” I asked after her lawyer sat quietly waiting for me to respond.
“Mr. Gilford, your mother has stipulated that if you are to receive a penny of her substantial fortune, you’ll be required to run The Gilford House Inn successfully for one year. That means at the end of that year, it cannot be in a worse state financially than it was when you inherited it, which is today. After a year, you will receive her fortune in full and may do what you please. She’s left a letter explaining it all here for you.”
The old man pushed the envelope toward me. Even that mannerism was painfully slow, and I wanted to just snatch it out of his hands. Then the full effect of what the officious bastard had just said hit me. I sat there in shock, unable to speak as my new reality sunk into my brain.
“The Gilford House Inn has indeed taken off in these past years, Mr. Gilford. Your mother ran a darned good business, and coupled with her ability to invest wisely, led a productive life. You’ll be well taken care of for it. In fact, my wife and I stayed at The Gilford House Inn a few years ago, and I can tell you it was the best vacation we’ve had in ages. We try to go back every year now, in fact, and it gets better and better each time. I think you’ll especially enjoy the…”
I slammed the palm of my hand hard on the desk, startling the man as his ridiculous collection of folksy knickknacks and pictures of his grandchildren rattled between us.
“Is this for real? I don’t give a damn about her little hole-in-the-wall motel! Can she actually put this in her will? Will this bullshit hold up in court? This has got to be some kind of sick joke. I can’t just take over some fleabag motel that I know nothing about. There has to be a way out of this!” I said, practically growling with anger.
I couldn’t believe this shit. My mother had known since I was a kid just how much I had hated that damned place. Sure, I had played there and enjoyed games of hide and seek in the hallways and the stairways as a child, but I’d loathed and despised that money pit since I was old enough to know better.
Though apparently, it hadn’t been as bad an investment as I’d thought. I didn’t begrudge her any success she may have had with the place. Good for her that she’d found success with it. Still, the notion of me running the place was nothing less than ridiculous.
Old man Worthington nodded, his eyebrows moving with his head as he said, “Yes, I put together the will with her, and it all checks out legally, so you better settle in, Mr. Gilford. You’ve got a year to do what she wanted. Otherwise, you aren’t getting a dime. Now I know this might seem overwhelming, but she left very detailed instructions so you can slide into the role of owner very easily. We worked together for weeks to ensure your easy transition.”
I shook my head and balled my fists at my sides. “She can’t do that. I’m her only child. That money has to go somewhere.”
I was grasping at straws, but I hoped if I confronted him that would make him cave and give me the money. “It’s not like you have any loyalty to her wishes, so what do you care? You’re just some lawyer.”
Worthington nodded again and answered after pausing for an insufferable amount of time. “Well, she did set aside a quarter of a million to be given to various charities. If you cannot fulfill the requirements outlined in her will, the money will automatically go to them. As for my caring, not only is this my job, Mr. Gilford, but ensuring your mother’s final wishes come to pass is also a privilege. She was a wonderful woman who worked hard for those she knew and deserved that in return.”
My mother and her charities. Over my dead body would strangers get what was rightfully mine.
He pointed at the envelope on the desk in front of me. “It’s all in there. She made sure to be quite explicit with her wishes. If you have any more questions, I can help you or I can put you in contact with…”
I didn’t feel like hearing anything else from the old man. I knew he wasn’t going to help me anyway, so I walked out on him, slamming the door behind me and startling the tacky twenty-something with a bad dye job behind the receptionist’s desk.
As I stepped outside and off the curb, I nearly got run over by some teal antique car and scowled angrily at the idiot driving it. An old man with a hat, like eighty percent of the population in Burlington, Vermont. They must have been importing them from the West coast because I’d already seen more old men in hats in Vermont than I had in all the years I’d spent in California.
I threw him a nasty look and slid into the driver’s seat of my Mercedes to read my mother’s letter to me.
My Dearest Zane,
If you are reading this, we never got the chance to talk before my death. For that, I am truly sorry. I leave this world with a host of regrets, but none more than what I did to you. My only child, you were blessed with everything good, and I believed it was my duty as your mother to give you everything I could. I know now that was a mistake.
I hope in death I will be able to give you what I did not in life. To that end, I am leaving you the inn. You will have to learn to work with the staff to ensure its success. You’ve never been very adept at tolerating others, but you will have to accept that people aren’t all like you if you ever want to inherit my money. Be good to them, Zane, and they will be good to you in return. I know you never believed me, but they are family. I hope you come to see that as I did.
Zane, I loved you, but I made mistakes giving you everything as you were growing up. I’m doing this in the hopes that I can compensate for all I didn’t do to teach you right. I hope you succeed. I believe with all my heart you will.
Love,
Mom
She had to be kidding.
I crumpled up the letter into a tight ball and whipped it at the passenger side window before tossing the packet Worthington had given me onto the floor behind me. It contained the relevant documents and information for running that rat hole of an inn, but it wasn’t anything I cared about at that moment.
Leave it to my mother to make her death worse than it already was.
I closed my eyes and thought of the time when I was sixteen and came home from boarding school on Christmas break to that crappy inn. It was already buried under too much snow, and I spent much of my so-called vacation in my room playing video games and pretending I was somewhere else. I’d avoided my mother for the most part, and it had been working out just fine until I heard her call my name from outside in the hall.
“Zane, sweetheart, will you come out, please? I’d love to see you downstairs in the dining room.”
I’d already figured out by that age that running the place kept her busy enough that if I ignored her the first or second time she called, she’d go away. Inevitably, some issue would crop up or some guest would want to thank her for something she’d done and she would leave me alone and more than likely forget whatever it was she had initially wanted me for.
Still, for whatever reason, I was curious, so I walked out of my room and into the hall to find out what she wanted.
“Honey, please come downstairs,” she called from the dining room as I stood stubbornly in the hallway above. “We have a few new additions to our team this Christmas, and I thought we could all decorate the big Christmas tree together! You’re going to love Bill here. He’s a Warriors fan just like you!”
I listened to a man mutter something, and I rolled my eyes and stayed silent.
“Zane Gilford, I know you can hear me. Come down here and meet Bill. It would be nice for you to talk to someone while you’re here. Maybe you’ll have a nice story to take back and tell the boys at school.”
I’d always hated it when she used that sickly sweet tone with me. She could have a real attitude when she wanted to, but she wanted to save face for the strangers she called our family. Uninterested in her attempt at creating some quaint holiday tradition, I remained where I stood and waited for the situation to pass so I could go back to doing what I wanted.
“Zane, get down here now, please.”
I’d stormed down the stairs and looked her dead in the eye as I snapped, “I don’t care about Bill or anyone else in this crappy excuse for a motel, Mom. I could be spending my vacation at school or with Justin and his family in Aspen, but instead, you drag me back to this place every year. I hate it!”
She’d shaken her head and smiled like always. “Honey, your family is here in Vermont. Not just me but everyone who works here. We’re all a team. Besides, it’s Christmas. Come on. We can all exchange presents after we finish the tree. I think our new chef even made some cookies for everyone. Isn’t that nice of him?”
I saw the employees behind her, nervous about any confrontation as they edged their way to the back of the room. It was smart of them. That’s where they belonged. At sixteen, I had more education than half of them and had already decided what kind of people I was going to surround myself with, and they weren’t it.
“Yeah, you want to give me the best gift of all? Send me back so I don’t have to hang out with you and these losers on Christmas!”
I stormed back upstairs and spent the rest of the vacation waiting to go back to boarding school where people who I liked existed.
She’d never understood that those people weren’t our family. Hell, they weren’t even friends. You didn’t pay friends and family to come by every day and clean up the sheets. Those people weren’t like us, and she could never get that through her skull. They were employees, the literal help, not our family.
My dad had died when I was ten, and ever since then, she’d tried to fill whatever hole in her heart that he’d left with that goddamned inn. I was constantly being introduced to new employees, and when they inevitably left, it was always devastating to my mother. As if anyone wanted to work in the service industry forever, other than her.
I punched my steering wheel as I let go of that memory and focused on the present. Her idea was ridiculous. What was I supposed to gain from a year in that shit hole other than an even deeper loathing of it and Vermont as a whole? It was just like my mother to leave the world with one more annoying task on her list for me.
Putting the car into drive, I peeled away from the curb with another angry punch to the steering wheel that left my hand throbbing. I drove to the last place I wanted to be for even a minute, let alone an entire year, so that I could claim my rightful inheritance.
It was just a year. How bad could that be, right?
A year in a bed and breakfast in Vermont.
God help me.