Page 14 of Meet Me on Greenwood

I sat down in a pool chair next to her. "Love in Seattle," I said reading the title. "Is it any good?"

She shrugged without looking up. "It’s got a lot of sex, that’s for sure. I’m glad someone is getting action."

I thought back to the last boyfriend she’d had. "Are you still with the bartender? Was his name Ryan?"

"Bryan," she said impatiently, "and no, we broke up a year ago."

"So, are you dating anyone now?"

This time she put down her book. "Is this really what you wanted to talk about? Because if so, I want to start with that Andre, Maise was telling me about."

"No," I said, silently cursing Maise for her loose tongue. "You really hurt Lyla’s feelings I think."

"Well, she hurt mine when she betrayed our friendship and married our dad, so I think we’re even."

I grimaced. "She was here, taking care of him at the end while we lived in different states. Maybe that means something."

She laid back, reading her book. "Does she want a fucking award? I could have helped. Dallas is only an hour’s plane ride away."

I was quiet for a moment, dipping my toe into the warm water. "Perhaps he didn’t want us to know. Neither of us have a great relationship with him."

She snorted. "Are you really going to pretend father didn’t favor you?"

"How did he favor me?"

Bri dropped all pretense of reading by throwing the book to the floor. "I don’t know, maybe it was every conversation starting with my daughter is at Johns Hopkins, and she got a large research grant, and she graduated med school. Wait, doesn’t she have a twin? Oh yeah, that one is selling handmade jewelry online." Bri clapped mockingly. "So proud."

I frowned realizing we were falling into the same tired argument we always did when it came to dad, as if he was the father to me that she always wanted. It wasn’t true. "I didn’t come to fight with you Bri."

"Yes, you did," she said standing. "Cornering me out here like this, rubbing all of this in my face."

"I did not—"

"Just forget it. I’m here for my inheritance and nothing more. You won’t have to tolerate me much longer," she said stalking off.

I decided to avoid Bri as much as possible after that. I spent a lot of my time in my room going over the data from the ORI, not that it got me far. There was something that I was missing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The only thing that pulled me away was the sound of Maise knocking on my door to tell me the funeral was about to start.

The service was exactly what my father would have wanted. Precise, well attended, and brief. He had never been a man who believed in excess emotion, and even in death, he seemed to have arranged things accordingly.

The funeral was held in a church that he had business ties to. His colleagues greeted Bri and I with solemn faces, telling us how he was a kind man and fair judge. While I didn’t doubt he was good at his job—he was nationally renowned for some of the cases he’d presided over— I’d never known him to be kind. My father was cold, and formal, much like the suit he wore in his coffin.

The man that lay there barely resembled my father. I wondered what he was thinking about in his last moments. Was it a peaceful passing, or did he think about the distance he put between his daughters by favoring me, if that’s what you called it. I called it pressure.

As we rode back quietly from the graveside in the limo, Lyla finally spoke. "Your father has arranged for the reading of the will first thing tomorrow." She handed us business cards for the law firm. "They want to see you at eight in the morning."

"Won’t you be there?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I went yesterday."

"So, you know what’s in it?" Bri asked curiously.

"Somewhat," Lyla confirmed. "He left me the house, and enough money for me to live on and keep it up."

I exchanged looks with Maise. This was not what we’d hoped for. "What about us?" Bri asked furiously. "That is our family home."

Lyla licked her lips. "It is my home as well. The one I built with your father for nearly a decade."

"A home you should have never occupied. If only you’d kept your legs closed around him—"