I sat down at the kitchen table and started to eat, as if I was totally nonchalant and this conversation was not absolutely critical to my escape from my past—my pasts in both Louisiana and California.
She shook her head. “But I don’t have any money, Zoe. I can’t afford to buy you out. And this place is hardly god-forsaken. It might once have been but not anymore. Lester and I made it into a good home. A God-fearing home.”
“Well, good for you. But that doesn’t change anything. It’s still half mine and I’m willing to sell you my share. Surely your wonderful husband had life insurance.”
She stiffened. “He only had a burial policy.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! With a family and all—”
“He had health problems. A bad heart. Life insurance was too expensive, okay?”
I wanted to ask how old he’d been when they got married, fifty? Sixty? But I didn’t. “So he left you in the lurch. Isn’t that just like a man.” I fixed her with a sharp eye. “Is that why you’re hooking up with good ol’ Carl? Need another sugar daddy?”
Finally I got a real rise out of her. “Just because you’ve lived a debauched life doesn’t mean the rest of us have!”
I gave a sarcastic snort. “I was here for seventeen years, Alice. I know exactly what sort of debauched life we lived.”
“I was raised in it, yes. Just like you. But I never lived my own life that way.”
“What makes you think I did?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Come on. I saw that music video, Zoe.”
“Really? Which one?”
“There was more than one?” Her face was a study in horror.
I just smiled, folded my hands on the table and nodded. But inside I was raging. How dare she judge me?
“The one I saw was about ten years ago. You were dancing in this low-cut dress, rubbing up against some guitar while this man watched you.” She shuddered.
I, too, shuddered in disgust when I thought of Dirk and the Dirt Bags, but for an entirely different reason, though that wasn’t her business. “How did you ever come to see that video?”
“Sue Ellen Jenkins. She saw it and she thought it might be you. So she recorded it and showed it to me.”
“So, what did she think?”
Her chin started to tremble and it took me aback. Why was she getting so upset? “I told Sue Ellen it wasn’t you,” she said in a shaky voice. “I told her you’d died in a car wreck in Texas.”
CHAPTER 3
“You told everyone that I was dead?”
It didn’t matter that Alice looked contrite. It didn’t matter that she ducked her head in shame. She’d told the whole world that I was dead even when she knew for a fact I wasn’t. Except for her son, I was her last living relative if you didn’t count her father, who’d disappeared long before I was born.
For her I was it. Yet she’d rather I be dead.
You abandoned her first.
I didn’t want to think about that, but it was an inescapable fact. When she wouldn’t run away with me, I’d run away without her and had never looked back. But that hadn’t been about her. It had been about this place. I’d had to get away; she’d been content to stay. That’s why now I ignored any excuses she had for her lie about my early demise. “You told Sue Ellen Jenkins that I was dead? Why? Were you afraid it would dirty your standing in the narrow, self-righteous church community you married into?”
I shoved my plate across the table, crossed my arms and glared at the top of her bowed head. Tears were dripping from the end of her nose. Phony, crocodile tears. “Tomorrow I’m getting a lawyer, settling the estate and putting this place up for sale.”
Her head jerked up. “You can’t do that!”
“Wanna bet? You can hire a lawyer to fight me, Alice. But that’s going to cost a lot of money, and in the end I’ll still get my inheritance. You can’t stop me.” I paused a beat. “So why not just strike an agreement with me now?”
She stared at me though teary eyes. “You don’t understand. I can’t. This is my home, mine and Daniel’s.”
“Oh, come on! There’s plenty enough land to go around. Just get the property appraised, split it into two parcels of equal value, and if you don’t want to buy my portion, then I’ll sell it to someone else.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”
“Well, that’s just too damned bad, isn’t it? You can’t poor-mouth your way out of this. You’ve lived here over twenty years, Alice. That’s a lot of free rent.”
“That’s not fair. Yes, I lived rent-free. But I’ve worked like a dog on this place. I’ve cleaned and scraped and sanded and painted. I’ve planted every single tree and shrub—”
“And it looks great. So what? Consider that sweat-equity your rent. I don’t care. It doesn’t change anything. This place is half mine, and I need my share!”
I hadn’t intended to get mad. I had meant to stay cool, to sit back and let her flail around on the hook of what’s-fair-is-fair. But just being in this house made me crazy. Decadent or painted up like an Easter egg, it didn’t matter. This place was a hellhole and I hated it. I wanted my money and I wanted out of here. The sooner Alice realized I was serious, the better.
So I leaned back in the chair and tried to calm my galloping pulse. “If you want the house, fine. I’ll take the back acreage and sell it.”
“But you can’t,” she muttered, head down again.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because…Because Lester and I…we built our church on it.”
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. “You built a church on it? On this foul piece of ground you built a church? That’s the church Daniel was talking about?”
“I’m not surprised that you’d laugh at a church.” Alice threw the words at me, rising from shame back into her comfort zone of righteous indignation.
“Oh, relax, will you? I’m not laughing at your precious church. Church or house, I don’t care, Zoe. All I want is what’s legally mine.”
“You don’t understand,” she said in a lower voice. “You can’t take the church because…”
I waited expectantly for whatever justification she would come up with.
“Because we sold the land it’s on to the church board. It belongs to them now.”
I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “You sold it? How could you have sold something that wasn’t yours to sell?”
“Everyone thought you were dead!”
“Everyone except you! You knew I was alive. You’d seen that video.” My rage boiled over, bone-deep and fire-hot. “You lied to get your hands on my inheritance. That’s illegal. That’s fraud. I could have you arrested.”
I pushed out of the chair and stormed to the back door. Then I whirled around and stared at her. She was scared. Good. She’d better be scared. “What did you do with the money? My money?”
She pressed her lips together. “Most of it went to fix up the house. And to build the church.”
“Okay. Fine. I’ll take the house then.”
“No, Zoe.” She stood up and reached a hand to me. “Please.