FEBRUARY 1996
35.
San Diego
Jade
Dear Fred,
My life is good and full and I’m loved and productive, but there is a gaping hole in my heart that I can’t heal without your help. I need to know DETAILS about everyone. It keeps me awake at night, wondering and worrying how you all are. Please. If you still love me at all, please do this for me.
Love, Ann
MARCH 1996
Dear Ann,
I’m happy to hear you’re doing well. You haven’t been forgotten, nor will you ever be. I hope you know that.
You ask for details, so I will do my best, but only this once and you must destroy this letter the second after you read it. Knowing you, you’d want me to be honest about the state of affairs here at home, so that is what I’ll be. I’m sorry if this worries you.
We are a family falling apart at the seams.
Your mother has never recovered from losing you. She’s very withdrawn and is on antidepressants. They help somewhat, but I miss the joyful woman she used to be. We are living in a nice part of North Carolina and she found a church she likes, but she’s made few connections. I believe she’s afraid to leave D and R unsupervised for a minute. She carries some blame for everything that happened and nothing I say can change that.
D has grown quite challenging to manage. He’ll be thirteen in September and, to be honest, we dread his teen years. He’s always angry, at what I don’t know. He’s a troubled boy who gets in fights at school and is sullen and hard to communicate with. I suppose this is simply a matter of the hormones getting a head start. We’re considering homeschooling him again, or rather your mother considers it, but I don’t think she has the energy to homeschool anymore. I don’t know if that’s the answer, anyway. He looks more like you every day.
R is growing into a beautiful girl. She is sweet, polite, and does well in school but she can be clingy with your mother and is overly sensitive, in my opinion, and I’ve tried to toughen her up with little success. She cries at the drop of a hat and is the type of child who finds stray puppies and kittens wherever she goes. D adores her and he’s a different boy around her. They are very close and you’d be pleased. She is not musically talented AT ALL. We have not pushed either her or D. They both hated piano lessons, and there is no point.
If the weather is good on R’s birthday, I plan to take her and D to the beach for the day to fly our homemade kites. (Do you remember the kite you and I made?) I don’t know if I’ll be able to persuade your mother to join us. Either way, we’ll have dinner at a restaurant on the way home. Yes, I still try to hold on to some of our traditions. R loves this place called the Sanitary Fish Market (what a name for a restaurant!) because all the diners eat together at long tables and she thinks that’s bliss. I expect one of these times she’ll break out singing “Kumbaya.” It’s a blessing that R doesn’t remember our family as it used to be. This is the norm for her—a perpetually sad mother, a preoccupied and worried father, and a confused and angry brother.
As for me, I’m sure you’ve gathered I’m no longer in my old line of work. I’m focusing on my collections now and have a small side business where I can work outdoors.
So there you have it, Ann, the wrap-up of the M family’s lives. Trust me when I say I want to know all about yours, but I’ll have to do without. We can’t continue this back-and-forth. There are people who remain suspicious.
Again, destroy this letter. I cannot say that forcefully enough.
With love,
Fred
36.
Riley
“So, what’s up, Riley?” Suzanne asked from her side of the desk. “You sounded upset on the phone.”
I was relieved that Suzanne had a cancellation for that afternoon and was able to see me. I told myself it was a sign that I was doing the right thing, and I needed to do it before I lost my nerve.
“I did?” I asked innocently. “I’d just gotten back from a run so I was probably out of breath. Everything’s fine, but I do need your help.” I folded my hands tightly in my lap. “I discovered that my father had wanted to update his will to have the RV park go to the Kyles, so I wanted to talk to you about how to make that happen.”
She tilted her head as though she might have misunderstood me. “Well,” she said slowly, “there’s no way to change the will now.”
“Oh, I know that,” I said. “But I … Danny and I … want to carry out our father’s wishes and somehow transfer the park to them. I just need you to tell me how to do that.”
She frowned as I spoke. She must have thought I was the most generous person in the world. “Well,” she said, “the first thing I’d advise is that you give this a whole lot of thought, Riley. You’re talking about valuable property. Jeannie can give you an idea of its worth, and—”
“She already has. She thinks we could get about two hundred thousand for it. But we can’t take it, knowing Daddy wanted someone else to have it.”
She leaned back in her chair, slipping on her reading glasses although there was no paperwork that I could see in front of her. “How did you find this out?” she asked.
I was glad she couldn’t see my hands from where she sat, since I was now wringing them in my lap. “Jeannie mentioned something about it,” I lied. “So did Verniece Kyle. And then as I was cleaning out my father’s desk, I found a ‘to do’ list where he said he needed to talk to you about rewriting his will, and in parentheses it said ‘Park to the Kyles,’ so I knew then that it was true. What Jeannie and Verniece said.”
I was a terrible liar. I always had been. Suzanne shifted in her seat, squinting at me. “Are you making this decision under duress?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s our decision. We just wouldn’t feel good about keeping it.”
“It’s very generous of you and your brother, Riley, but I wish you’d talk to a financial advisor before you make a huge decision like this. Are you aware of the tax implications?”
Tax implications? That gave me pause, but I didn’t want to sound like I hadn’t thought this through.
“Yes.” I nodded.
“That you’ll have to file a gift tax form with the IRS?” she asked, as if she didn’t believe me. “You don’t have to actually pay taxes on the gift until you reach the lifetime limit, but you’re only twenty-five and you never know how much—”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, Suzanne,” I interrupted. “We want to do it, and the sooner the better. I really want to get the estate taken care of so I can go back to Durham and my life.”
“Well, that’s what worries me,” she said. “That in your rush to get back to your life, you’re not making the wisest decisions.”
I leaned forward. I needed to get this over with. “How do we do it?” I asked. “Do you need to draw up a contract or what?”
She sensed my impatience and gave in to me with a small nod of her head. “It’s called a gift deed,” she said. “It’s really quite simple. As grantor, you sign the deed over to the Kyles. As grantee, they sign it as well, accepting it without special warranty. They can have a title search performed, which I’d recommend, but they can waive that if they so choose. Then I, or rather my secretary, will deliver the deed to the courthouse to be recorded and we’re done. It’s that simple.”
“Perfect,” I said. “When can we do this?”
“I can draw up the form this afternoon and you can all come in tomorrow afternoon to sign it.”
You all. “Does Danny need to come, too?” I asked. I was his trustee. I was counting on him not needing to sign.
“No,” she said. “The only problem with us doing it tomorrow is that I won’t be able to get the deed to the courthouse until Monday, so it won’t be recorded until then.”
“That’s fine.”
“Usually”—she peered at me above her reading glasses—“the language in a gift deed states that the transfer is being made in consideration of love and affection between the grantor and grantee.”
My stomach knotted at the words. “Just leave that out,” I said.
She gave me a worried smile. “Will do,” she said, and I had the feeling she didn’t believe for a moment that I wasn’t making this decision under duress.