Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76203 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“I guess. I don’t have any more information than that, but Arty is going to try to dig some more. But I do have the information of the attorney. You can call, get whatever information you can…”
“This is a lot.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, reaching out to grab her knees, giving them a squeeze. “What’s going on in your head?”
“I don’t know. My mind is racing back and forth between it all—the plane crash, the money, my grandfather’s illness, the money, the fact that I’m all alone in the world. I mean, I know I was alone already, but this is a much more final way.”
“You’re not alone. I’m here.”
Her gaze flicked up.
“And if I’m some rare mineral heiress?”
“Got a feeling Denali will be even more spoiled than she already is.”
“Yeah.”
“And you might get yourself an SUV to match mine.”
“In a more fun color.”
“And maybe you’ll get yourself a pass to the national parks.”
“And a camper, since I doubt Denny will want to rough it in a tent.”
“After seeing her princess routine in the pool, I think you might be right about that.”
“Probably best not to get ahead of ourselves, though. Trust me when I say I didn’t leave town on good terms. My grandfather and I had a screaming match the night before. It was the ugliest it had ever been. I don’t know if I believe he would leave anything to me. He had a lot of friends, somehow. I could see him leaving them the ranch and leaving me some notebook full of his list of disappointments in me.”
“Guess we won’t know until you call.”
“Yeah,” she said, exhaling hard. “I guess I’ll call in the morning. But I get the feeling that this is going to be a trip back to Wyoming to discuss things and prove my identity and all that jazz. I don’t know if this is the time for that.”
“Well, no one is saying you have to go anywhere alone,” I reminded her.
“You’d go with me to Wyoming?”
“I’d kind of insist on it at this point.”
She sat with that for a minute.
“Okay then. I guess we will see what the lawyer says tomorrow.”
“Yep,” I agreed as we both got up. “But just for the record, I thought you were pretty cool before you became some rare mineral heiress.”
She rolled her eyes at that.
But when I pressed a hand to her lower back as we walked, she didn’t pull away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Runa
I couldn’t sleep.
Not even Denali’s slow, rhythmic breathing and her stars projected onto the ceiling and walls were enough to lull me to sleep.
Not after all the news York had just given me.
My family: dead. All of them. My entire lineage, gone. Without me even knowing.
There was grief—more than I expected. But the more I sat with it, the more it felt like grief for what could have been, not for what had been. I grieved the mother and father I should have had, the ones I maybe hoped they would grow into one day. But the news of their money-wasting, extravagant ways told me not much had changed in the years I’d been away.
Was I horrified at their manner of death? Sure. I wished everyone could go at night, in their sleep, none the wiser that it was happening. But that wasn’t what they’d gotten, and my heart hurt for the fear they must have felt in those final moments.
As for my grandfather, my feelings were even more complicated. He was a monster in many ways, yes. We argued constantly. He beat me often. But he was the only consistent adult figure in my life. He might not have been warm and fluffy about it, but he was there to take me to doctor’s appointments or to get a cast at the hospital. Did he lecture me about climbing things I shouldn’t? Sure. But he was there. The only person who was. He taught me to ride a bike, ride a horse, shoot a gun.
There was a lot of bad.
But it hadn’t all been bad.
It took me years away from home to put it into perspective. There was still a lot of anger and pain at some aspects of my childhood, but there had been some good moments.
And any chance to try to sit down with my grandfather and have a talk about that, introduce him to his great-granddaughter—that was all gone.
Worse yet, he’d been sick. For a man as strong and prideful as he was, I knew that couldn’t have been easy. And I hadn’t been there. There was some regret about that too.
So all that was spinning around in my mind until I felt sick enough to have to get out of bed and leave the room, go seek some fresh air.
I hadn’t even been letting myself think about the money. If there even was any money coming to me. It was too risky to hope.