A special gift.
It also included another special gift.
This being him saying, “Babe, drywalling is dusty. You can cut off that space you’re living in when I install the door so you don’t gotta cope with the dust. I do the kitchen for you before finishing the…”
He went on but I heard nothing but his babe. And once he gave it to me, I didn’t care that as a general rule, contractors put up all the drywalling and did all the taping and painting before they started to get to the good stuff, like installing floors and fitting kitchens.
I’d give up anything for that babe.
So I’d agreed.
But since, he didn’t give me another babe.
He definitely didn’t give me another baby.
That was beginning to be my lot.
Now we were in the main space which had seemed cavernous due to it being empty and wall-less, but was seeming even more cavernous as I’d noted how much longer it was taking Deke to make progress. He’d put up a sheet and it felt like an inch was achieved since there still was so much more left to do.
And now, before he got around to giving me actual walls on that side of the house, I was talking to him about the extra room to the south side that had a special purpose.
Deke looked from behind me to me. “Weight of the roof held up by joists, load bearing for your second story not around those doors, so sure. We can figure something out.”
“You do know I heard nothing but blah, blah, blah, so sure. We can figure something out.”
His lips tipped up and his hazel eyes lit.
I did a mental, Yee ha!
“Bro, sorry to interrupt,” the delivery guy interrupted and Deke looked to him. “We’re done. Gotta check this and sign off.”
“Right,” Deke replied and moved his way as my phone rang.
I pulled it out of my pocket, saw the display said Mr. T was calling and I sighed before taking it, ticked even more Mav and Luna were making me dread calls from Mr. T. They weren’t always the delight of my day, but he’d been a staple in my life since I started it. I cared for him deeply, in the only way he’d allow me to do that. So I’d never dreaded his calls.
Now I did because now there was never anything but bad news perpetrated by my brother and his shrew of a mother.
Regardless of this, I took that call how I usually took all of them, with a, “Hey, Mr. T.”
“Justice, how are you?” he asked.
“Hanging in there, you?” I asked back, beginning to move to the door to the back deck.
“Unfortunately, I’m calling to inform you we’ve had official communication that Maverick is contesting your father’s will.”
“That sucks,” I muttered, thinking this would be it so the call wouldn’t be long and glancing at Deke to see he was in the middle of counting sheets of drywall with the delivery guy standing close so not paying a lick of attention to me and my call.
Therefore, instead of going outside and leaving his presence (I’d been fucked and was getting more fucked, not even wanting to walk out of a room Deke was in—he was like a goddamned drug), I leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and stared out at the calming view.
“This means those assets are frozen, Justice. I know they’ve already been distributed but you can no longer use them until this has played out.”
“Awesome.” I was still muttering but now I was doing it sarcastically.
“This means your brother also can’t use his,” Mr. T pointed out.
I thought about how Luna had used her son to keep her living the good life, using him by flying through the divorce settlement in a couple of years, not getting a job and consistently threatening to take my father back to court in order to increase already substantial child support for a son they shared custody of so she could live off her kid’s back.
Dad didn’t make her take him back to court. To make things easier on Mav, he just increased the money.
That legal agreement had ended when Mav turned eighteen and didn’t go to college.
The situation didn’t end, however. Mav used his share of Granddad’s royalties as well the trust fund Dad set up for him to keep not only himself but his mom living the life they’d become accustomed to, but mostly, I figured, the life she’d become accustomed to.
To my knowledge, that trust fund was quickly dwindling, which was why Dad augmented Mav’s funds frequently, something Dana let slip one night before Dad died when she’d gotten a bit tipsy. Something Mr. T allowed to happen and followed through on because Dad said it would be so. Not like what had happened with Aunt Tammy and Rudy when they’d not only cut off Rudy’s access to his trust fund when he’d started pissing it away, they’d used a caveat in Granddad’s will to cut off his access to his share of Granddad’s royalties.
This, I suspected, was one of the reasons Luna and Mav were making the foolish play to try to get half of Dad’s estate.
The other reason was that Luna was just a greedy bitch.