Tuesday Tales: From the Word LAZY

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales. I’m continuing my new novel, Trouble with Eden. My cover artist has graciously provided a cover. I find it easier to draft the story when I can see my characters face to face.

Eden James Walford, known to everyone in Easton Corners as E J, sat in the lawyer’s office listening to her stepfather’s last will and testament. Dwayne Walford hadn’t been the easiest man to live with, but he’d been a good father and had loved her mother, sticking with her, doing the best he could for her until the cancer finally took her. Once her mother had passed, Dwayne had continued to care for twelve-year-old Eden, treating her like his own daughter, giving her a home, a name, and an education—even if it were an unorthodox one—and he’d given her a job. She’d loved the man, the only father she remembered, her own having died when she was an infant. Losing him was much harder than she’d imagined—and now this.

Dwayne what were you thinking?

Never in the twenty-eight-years that she’d lived with him had he mentioned having a child of his own. Now, he’d left half of Paradise Towing to his son, her stepbrother, along with half of the house. At least the money from his insurance policy and what there was in the bank was hers.

“So let me get this straight, Mr. Pruitt. I’m living in a house that is no longer mine, working for a company that belongs to a stranger.”

“Yes and no,” the lawyer said, his voice with its lazy maritime drawl grating on her frazzled nerves. He sat behind his desk, his reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, a plexiglass shield separating him from her. “The house was never yours per se. It belonged to your stepfather, although I suppose you considered it yours having lived there most of your life. We all think of our parents’ homes that way.”

Great. He wanted to argue semantics while she might be out on her ear.

“You own half of the property which includes the house and three outbuildings. Similarly, you own half of Paradise Towing and all its assets, except your car which your father gave you free and clear last year. I’d hoped we could go through that part of the will but unfortunately, Mr. Rivers is indisposed and can’t meet with us today. He was involved in an accident a couple of days ago. He hit a moose on the 138.”

That’s it. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales