002 - Whoops
The reading of the will.
The steering wheel was wet with the nervousness emanating from Eleanor’s palms. She’d been listed as a beneficiary in Ellis’s will. But she’d never opened the document sent to her by the executor that listed what of Ellis’s she’d inherited. Knowing Ellis, it was presumably a shrunken head he’d picked up in Ecuador, or a mummified cat from his winter in Egypt.
Ellis was always on some kind of an escapade, some crazy crusade, adventuring into the wild unknown. Getting himself into trouble. It was normal to not hear from him for months at a time. But when he didn’t show up for the holidays, everyone went into a frenzy.
No matter where he got lost, or what he did, Ellis always, without fail, was home for the holidays. If adventure and mystery were his first loves, they still had to sit second to his family. It was crisp in Eleanor’s mind, the panic that moved her fingers across her phones keypad. It rang to his voicemail - and it would, without fail, ring to his voicemail for the next few years.
“Oh thank you, you are a saint,” her mother said when Eleanor lifted the plastic bag containing brie cheese.
“Are we expecting more company?” Eleanor wondered at the kitchen island. Not an inch was left uncovered. It was more food than her and her parents could down, even with her fathers late night bingescapades.
“This is it.”
“What, the executor isn’t coming to read the will?”
She chucked the cheese into the fridge, bag and all. “Nope, but we figured you might have an appetite after you read it.”
“Me?” And then a long pause, “wait, you already read it?”
“Guilty as charged.” Dad rounded the corner, his nose buried in a red covered Blake Crouch novel.
“Oh would you put that down!?” Mom chucked a large green grape at his head. It bounced off his skull and landed into the unknown.
“Better find that before King does,” Eleanor said right as the furry mongrel stretched in his plush bed at the corner of the sofa. Only her parents would name a dog ‘King’. He was taking every advantage of the title too.
Eleanor fixed herself a plate of food per command of her mother as if she were still a child and not on the crux of thirty one.
“Whatever happened to, oh what was his name? Seth?”
“Scott. And that ended a year ago,” Eleanor muffled between bites. Her mother stifled a laugh.
“What?” Eleanor reared her left eyebrow. Her mother said nothing, but her expression was speaking a thousand words. Eleanor just couldn’t decipher their meaning. People were a type of puzzle she found tiring to decode. Even ones she’d known all her life.
“Nothing, nothing. Shall we?” She held up a thin white laptop, inside which a document was open and waiting to be read.
Eleanor swallowed back her meal with a bubbly cider, “do I have the option to decline?”
Her mother paused, looked upward at the speckled ceiling, “mmm, no.”
“Then I suppose,” she sighed. Her mother opened the laptop and her father closed his novel. Eleanor entwined her fingers together. She shut her eyes and concentrated on that familiar spot inside herself that confirmed her brother wasn’t gone. She always struggled explaining to others what that tie felt like. She often landed on it being akin to the eerie sense of someone watching you, or the way you can feel another person standing behind you without ever seeing them.
“Here,” her mother spun it around, glowing screen lighting up Eleanor’s face. The will sat open in front of her. Of course her brother had a will. Because all thirty year old’s should. Eleanor rolled her eyes. No, her brother had a will because he was reckless and how he hadn’t gotten himself killed yet was a downright miracle. But what on God’s green earth could he possibly have to offer?
Eleanor pulled her reading glasses from her pocket and slid the laptop closer, eyeing her mother across the table.
“Wait till you hear this,” her father smirked. They seemed so jolly for what should be a somber occasion. Was she really convinced Ellis wasn’t gone? Why did it hurt so much to read a stupid document? Eleanor turned her attention and mumbled out the will, reading off what was allotted to her parents.
“Gold from Peru? How much gold? Gold?!” Eleanor blinked again at the words. The total amount was enough to pay off their parents mortgage three times over.
“I can’t believe he kept this from us,” Eleanor said only a decibel above a whisper. All of his findings through the year, his prized possessions and artifacts were to be distributed to the university or a museum, in which he entrusted Eleanor to handle. Because she, of course, was the responsible one.
“Which also means you’re the boring one,” Eleanor finished his line he always quipped like ready ammunition. Eleanor’s hand hovered over the keyboard as she scrolled through the list of items under her responsibility until she paused at the last one. Attached to it was a note, just for her.
Hey lany, if you’re reading this, then I’m either dead or lost…whoops. I guess you were right. I’d hoped to share this with you in person, but seeing as you’re reading this, well as stated before…whoops. The castle is yours. But please don’t just up and sell it without seeing it. I only wish I was there to see your face when you stepped into the library.
P.S. sorry about the cat.
“A castle? He leaves you a fortune and I get a measly piece of crumbling rubble?” Eleanor huffed.
“Oh,” she continued, “In Scotland no less! That’s what, five hours via train? I’ll be as old as the queen by the time I get there.”
“Eleanor,” Her father elicited a tone that reminded her to calm down. She breathed, pulled her glasses off her face and swept away a stray curl.
“I…do not have the time to take care of his sh…stuff,” she bit her tongue in the presence of her parents.
“You’ll have plenty of time to sort things out,” Caroline smiled as she cut herself a slice of raspberry topped cheesecake. Eleanor furrowed her brows.
Her father swiveled around in the bar stool and stretched out his considerably long legs. Something she’d inherited. “It takes six to twelve months for assets to be settled and distributed to beneficiaries.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened, “Oh good, maybe Ellis will return in between now and then.”
But Ellis did not return.