Unlike the law offices for Gaia — which are in an old, soaring office right off the water downtown, all the furniture antique or specially designed, the lobby boasting free espresso, filtered lemon water, and Kombucha — this office is sparse.
A woman greets me in the lobby and asks me to take a seat, and a moment later, one of the doors on the left side of the room opens, and an older man steps out.
“Ms. Aarons?”
I stand, heart pounding, a lump in my throat. “That’s me,” I croak.
He nods and gestures for me to follow him into his office.
Inside, there are two large windows backed up onto a thicket of trees and bushes, and the effect reminds me of the tech bros I’ve seen with massive LED displays showing nature in their living rooms. Except this is real; a squirrel jumps onto a branch, pauses, and hurries away.
“I had to fight for this office,” the lawyer jokes, stepping in past me and shutting the door. The room is small enough that he has to squeeze his way through to sit on the other side of the desk. “The other one faces the freeway.”
I laugh at that, and it eases some of the tension in my shoulders. Maybe this is why Jasper made the drive all the way out to Redwood City.
“I’m George Edwards,” he starts once we’re both settled. “You can call me George.”
“Lacey Aarons,” I return. “You can call me Lacey.”
That makes him laugh, and I relax into the seat a bit more.
“Jasper and I knew each other from school,” George says, clearing his throat and looking down at his desk. “I was working with him to settle his estate before the end. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. He was a great guy. One of the few who stood up for me back then.”
I swallow and swallow and swallow, desperately trying to keep the tears at bay. Of course when Jasper was in school, he’d lookout for the little guy. Now itreallymakes sense that he was driving out here to Redwood City. Of course he’d want to work with a lawyer he was familiar with.
“I’m glad he was able to spend so much time with a friend,” I say, trying to sound genuine and not bitter — not like how I feel, deep down. That I wish Jasper and I had spent every single second together from the moment he found out he was sick.
That, if I had known, I might have taken my first vacation in years. Might have actually chosen something over work.
But instead, he and I stuck to weekly dinners with Mom, the occasional midday stroll around the park near my office, when he came by with street tacos from our favorite food truck.
Tacos, Bug, he’d say as casually as if we had all the time in the world.That enough to lure you from your office?
“Well, I wouldn’t call us friends,” George amends, pulling off his glasses and cleaning them with a tiny black cloth. “But I admired him. And I was more than happy to help him out with this.”
Sliding his glasses back onto his face, he clears his throat and opens the folder on his desk. “First, I have a letter for you. And second, the deed to Jasper’s cabin.”
It takes a moment for those words to fully sink into my brain, and I just stare at the desk as George slides a document over. Information about location and value. George says something about needing to pay taxes on the inheritance, but I can barely hear him through the roaring in my ears.
Jasper’s cabin — the one he built himself. His sanctuary in the woods.
He’d tried to get me to go out there any number of times, claiming it would be good for my creative energy. Saying I needed a break. Once even offering to teach me how to fish if I got the weekend off.
But I never did make it.
And now, it looks like I’ll be going up there without him.
CHAPTER 2
MAX
When the music in my workshop stops playing, I don’t even look up from the piece of wood I’m holding. Firstly, because if I move now, I’m going to mess up the portion I’m carving. And secondly, because I don’t want to give Warren the satisfaction.
“I told you to call first,” I grumble, saying the words to the chair leg in my hand, rather than the man who is surely standing in the threshold of my workshop, trying to figure out how to get me to do something I don’t want to do.
Warren isalwaystrying to get me to do something I don’t want to do.
“Your phone is never on,” Warren counters, which is fair. Since moving up here, I haven’t had much use for it, and it gets a shitty signal anyway. Most days, I forget I even have one, until Warren drives out and chews me out for beingunsafe.
