Category Archives: Inheritance

Sorting out Carson’s legacy only leads to more questions.

Author’s Note: Okay, yes, I’m doing two posts for this serial today. That’s because I wrote the last section last night and then saw the words for Three Word Wednesday. They almost went with what I was doing, all but ponder. It was harder to slip in than the others and still feels a bit forced.

Today’s words: heave, ponder, and valid.

Strained Brotherly Affection

“You’re back late.”

“Had to wait for the guy to get back from his trip into town, and then it took a while to figure out what to do with the car,” Carson said, not wanting to go into detail about what the woman had found when she looked at it. He’d hoped her grandfather wouldn’t have confirmed it, but he agreed. A bullet hole. Every time he thought about it, his stomach started to heave, and he didn’t want to vomit. He’d disgraced himself enough today, in front of strangers—well, he must have met Mac before, since he was one of Grandpa’s friends, but Carson didn’t remember that.

He had enough holes in his memory to drive a truck through, he thought, passing Larry back his keys. “Here. It needs gas. I didn’t realize that until I gave the Steadmans back the trailer.”

Larry frowned. “You okay? You look… If you’re going to puke, do it somewhere else, not on me. If I’d have known it would have been so hard for you to deal with that wreck, I’d have come with you. Or done it for you.”

“I’m fine. I’m not a child. I can handle this kind of stuff on my own. I don’t need big brother to do it for me.”

“Easy, Carson,” Nick said as he came up to join them. “You left early this morning, and it took you the better part of the day. Considering what you went through in the past, Larry has a valid reason for being concerned. Even without the past, you look like the heat got you or worse.”

Carson cursed himself for being so transparent. He couldn’t help feeling sick, had before he got back to the farm. He’d hoped to be able to give Larry the keys and go, needed to get as far away from his family as he could manage, but he’d already taken too long to get out of here.

“Was there a problem with the car?”

“No. It’s—they’re going to deal with it. I don’t have to worry about it,” he said, though he did. He couldn’t help it. He shouldn’t have left the car with Mackenna or her grandfather, but she seemed to want to restore it, and he thought that was better than turning it into scrap metal. He didn’t know, though. He couldn’t be sure of anything right now. He didn’t know who to trust or what to do.

“That’s something, at least.”

Carson nodded. “I’m just going to grab my bag. I have to work in the morning.”

“Drive in early. You shouldn’t be on the road like this.”

That was not an option. He was not going to stay here one minute longer. He couldn’t trust anyone in his family, not now, and all this concern coming from his brothers just made him feel worse. If he managed to get out of the driveway without throwing up, he’d be doing good. “I got rid of the car, the scrap metal’s set aside to be dealt with, and that’s it. I just want it all done and behind me. I’m going back to town, back to work.”

“You know… burying this thing doesn’t seem to have helped you any. Sure, you can act like you’re in control and pretend you’re okay, but if it’s that easy to get you back the way you were in high school, you need to do more than run away.”

Carson shook his head. “Just stop, Nick. I… I appreciate the concern, but I’m the one with the delusions about murder, not you. I’m the one that has to sort out what I know and what I don’t. I’m not going to do that here. I’ve never seen things clearly here, and you know it. All this place does is confuse the issue.”

“That why you really stopped coming out on the weekends to visit Grandpa? You said that you were busy, but you were avoiding the farm, weren’t you?”

“Maybe. I don’t—I always thought it was just work. I had a lot on plate. I still do. I…”

“Ease off, Nick. You’re making it worse,” Larry said, putting a hand on Carson’s shoulder. His stomach rolled, and he tried to remind himself that it was unlikely that his brothers had anything to do with the murder, if there had been one. Their father had as good as disappeared when Carson was still a baby, and they were just kids. Neither of them would have been old enough back then. Of course, if the nightmares had surfaced in high school because that was when he’d seen something, then both of his brothers would have been old enough to be part of it.

“All right, Carson, go on. Call us when you get back so we know you made it there safe. Don’t worry about how late it is.”

“Uh, sure,” he said, wishing Larry would stop touching him. “I need to go.”

Nick nodded. “Here’s hoping once you get home you can sort it all out. Do all the thinking and pondering you need until you’re satisfied with your answers.”

“What answers? I still don’t have any.”

His brother shrugged. “Maybe that’s because there was nothing to question in the first place.”

I hate you. Carson shook his head. “I’m not crazy. There has to be some reason for what I think I saw. I’m just… gonna have to accept that I may never know what that is.”

Author’s Note: I was looking through the pictures of a family reunion and stumbled across a picture of a car used for bootlegging, and that car was partial inspiration for the one Mac has. It made sense to make it a Chrysler since the Maxwell car company became a part of Chrysler in 1925. I don’t know if the one in my family was an Airstream Eight, but I included a picture of it anyway.

The Strange Ways of Old Men

Mackenna looked over with a smile as the old Airstream Eight bounced down the dirt road of the driveway, shaking her head as she thought about trying—again—to convince her grandfather that there had been a decent car built in the last end of the twentieth century instead of the first. He was stubborn, though, and she didn’t know that he would ever give in on that end—not that the sixty-eight pickup helped much in that regard. She’d never talk him into a new one with all the bells and whistles, not even if it would mean being able to haul the antiques reliably and make more of the shows and runs he needed to make if he wanted to build his reputation as a mechanic.

She grimaced. His reputation wasn’t in question—whether or not he’d passed that talent on to his granddaughter was. Most people didn’t get a girl like her wanting to drive or work on the Maxwells, and she found herself rolling her eyes when they asked her if she was “capable” of driving one of them. She’d taken that out on Koslow, like always.

“There’s Grandpa. He can give you a better idea of the car’s value than I can, and then I guess we’d better send you on your way.”

Koslow nodded. She thought he still looked lost, not sure what he was doing or what to do, and she wondered if letting him go was like shooing away a stray dog who hadn’t eaten in days. Sure, he didn’t belong, and all that baggage he dragged with him was complicated as hell, but she felt bad about sending him off on his own, in way over his head without even his family to trust.

Then again, most people didn’t have family to trust these days, did they?

She shook that one off and turned to her grandfather, going over to his side as he got out of the Chrysler. “I take it you escaped lunch with the church ladies? No bingo today?”

Mac shrugged. He didn’t say much most of the time, and she could live with that. He was a product of his generation, and she didn’t need to talk much, either. What was there to say, anyway? They knew each other too well, and nothing new ever happened around here. Well, with the exception of Koslow and his inheritance and an apparent murder.

“That the Steadmans’ trailer?”

“Yeah. I need to get that back, too. Borrowed the truck and the trailer. Only thing I own is… well, that,” Koslow said, pointing to the Maxwell. “I guess it’s been in a barn for… thirty years or more. I didn’t even know Grandpa had it.”

Mac nodded, taking off his glasses and wiping them with the handkerchief in his pocket before moving closer to the Maxwell. “Henry never mentioned having it, not to me, and you’d think that he would have.”

Mackenna hadn’t realized that Koslow was Henry Royce’s grandson. She should have connected it sooner, but then he must be one of the daughter’s sons. She knew all of Tim Royce’s boys, and she hated them all. She didn’t know that she’d ever met any of Nancy’s kids. Those boys had scattered across the country and never seemed to visit, not since Mackenna had moved here. She figured they were only here for the funeral and the will.

Mac had a point, though—why wouldn’t Royce have told his best friend, the Maxwell nut, that he had one of them? “Unless, of course, he picked it up right before someone got murdered and hid it as evidence.”

Mac stopped, looking back at Koslow. “You’re the one with the nightmares.”

Koslow fidgeted, uncomfortable under the older man’s gaze. “That still a big deal around here? I’d hoped that had kind of faded off into obscurity.”

She looked at him. “You make a big fuss back then?”

“Half the county got searched with them special trained dogs, looking for a body or some kind of remains,” Mac said, filling in some of the details for her. She’d still lived with her aunt across the country back then, had no idea what it had been like when Koslow made the accusation the first time around. “Not a thing.”

“I wasn’t making it up because I was high. I’m not a drug addict. I only took drugs after that, and they were prescription ones,” Koslow said, getting defensive. “I didn’t—I shouldn’t have brought the car here. I can go.”

“Someone put a bullet in your car.”

“Not necessarily. Could have been something else. Thirty years of neglect does things to a car, right?”

Mac gave him a look. “They ever find your father?”

“No.”

“You look like him.”

“So I’m told. Mom said it got worse every year.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to tell a kid, even if your father did run off on her,” Mackenna said, shaking her head. Koslow shrugged, and she sighed. He was a mess. “What do you think, Mac? Could we get her running again?”

Her grandfather nodded. “I’d think so. Have to get her off and get a better look at the rest of her first, but she’s in good shape for where she’s been.”

“You can call the car a ‘she,’ but I’m a chauvinist for assuming that Mac Gilreath means him and not you?” Koslow asked, and Mackenna turned around to smile at him. He shook his head, and her smile widened.

Her grandfather waved her over to the back of the Maxwell. She knew better than to think he wanted to discuss the state of the pinion. “You can’t fix people like you can cars. You take this on, you be sure you’re working on the car, not its owner.”

She shrugged. “Machines are my thing, not people. If I could fix people, don’t you think I’d have started with myself?”

Mac acknowledged her words with a slight move of his head. “Henry worried about that one, worried a lot.”

“Was he scared of him or for him?”

Mac shrugged. She rolled her eyes. Sometimes the old man was impossible.

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Author’s Note: It’s a sad day when being crazy is the easier path, isn’t it?

Crazy Seems Simpler

“Bullet hole. Right. Bullets… That makes sense… Only it doesn’t and…” Koslow put a hand to his head, the rest of his words deteriorating into incoherent babble as he faltered, crumpling as he went down to the ground. Maybe he was more of a psycho than she’d thought at first, but that wasn’t fair. She knew better. He looked way too much like her uncle had before his PTSD made him put a gun to his own head.

She refused to be that helpless again, even if she’d only been a child when her uncle died and couldn’t have changed anything—medication and therapy hadn’t worked—so she knelt beside Koslow and put a hand on his arm. Keeping her voice gentle, she tried to coax him out of it, using the same thing she used to do with animals when this place was more of a farm and less of a relic. She didn’t know that she was doing anything right, but after a while, his breathing seemed to level out, and the babble was gone.

His eyes cleared, and he stared at her, horrified. “Oh, no, please tell me I didn’t. Damn, I haven’t had one of those in more than a decade. I’m sorry. This is… embarrassing, to say the least.”

She shrugged. “I’m not one to judge. Never have been. Might have learned that the hard way, but you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Sure I don’t,” he said, dragging himself up with the help of his truck. “I… I can’t believe I did that. I swear that hasn’t happened since I was—I don’t even know why it happened. Shouldn’t have freaked out over something like that. I don’t even know that there’s any reason to think that it’s a bullet hole or that it has anything to do with… anything.”

Mackenna studied him. “You ever manage to convince yourself with that kind of talk? It doesn’t sound like it would work for me.”

He lowered his head. “Doesn’t work for me, either, or I’d have put this all behind me years ago.”

She leaned against the truck next to him. “What’s this, anyway? Oh, don’t look at me like that. You come here with a rare car and bullet hole and have a panic attack and think I won’t be even the slightest bit curious?”

“I don’t—I know you probably are. I owe you an explanation. I just… I’m trying to find a way to do it. I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding crazy. It is. I—My father took off when I was born, and none of us have heard from him since. Then… for no reason that anyone can explain, when I was in high school, I stared having nightmares about him. Dead. I don’t know how or why. I thought it happened at my grandfather’s farm, but they never found a body. I went into therapy, they gave me medicine, and I went to college and put it all behind me. Then Grandpa dies, I inherit what’s in the barn, and it’s all back like it was…”

She shook her head. “Not like it was.”

“Um, no offense, but you don’t know me, and you didn’t know me then and so you—”

“Now you have a car with a bullet hole. I’d say that you have proof this time around—or at least a whole lot more to go on, now don’t you?”

He looked back at the car, shaking his head. “I don’t get it, though. If my grandfather knew about the bullet hole, if he knew that my father was dead, that someone shot him, doesn’t that mean that he did it? Why the hell wouldn’t he just tell me that instead of putting me through all this? He’s dead; it can’t hurt him anymore. Even if it wasn’t him… Why not tell me? He can’t have been threatened by the person who did it. They have no hold over him. He’s dead. If it’s someone in my family… shouldn’t I know that instead of having some kind of… wild goose chase?”

“Well, yeah, I’d think so. I mean, you’d have to figure that whatever you might remember would put you in danger from them, so I don’t know why he wouldn’t just come out and say it, especially if he knew he was dying. Did he?”

“Heart attack. It was sudden, but he did leave a will, so… he had some kind of plan even if he didn’t know the day or hour.”

She nodded. “How many people know you have the car?”

He winced. “Five, counting the two of us. My two brothers and my sister-in-law. I wouldn’t have thought it had anything to do with my brothers, though. He was their father, too, and they’re not that much older than me. Nick is three years older, Larry five. It’s not… I think I’d rather be crazy.”

Mackenna let out a breath. “Yeah, comparing that to mistrusting your whole family, that’s got to be the easier path.”

“Would you help me get rid of the car? Just find someone who wants the parts or something. You’d know better than I would how to find the right kind of person.”

She frowned, taking hold of his arm. “Why would you do that? The car’s all you’ve got. Your one shot at finding whoever it was that killed your father and ending your nightmares. You need it.”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t. I don’t know who to trust, and if I pursue this, if I tell anyone in my family what I’m doing… I’m as good as dead.”

“I’d say you’re more in a position of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Ignorance can’t save you forever.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t suppose I said anything in my panic attack that might have… helped or made any kind of… sense, did I?”

“No. At first you had real words, but it went to gibberish fast.”

“That’s what always happens.” He closed his eyes. “Um… The truck belongs to my brother now, so I need to get it back to him, and I have to be in the city in the morning. I…”

“We can unload the Maxwell if you want. My grandfather and I can take a look at it and see what it needs and what it’s worth. He’ll love having his hands on another one of these. He’s got two, and they’re his favorites.”

“Thank you. Not just for that, but… for all of it.” He looked at her hand and then shook his head again. “No. I can’t ask you to do that. If anyone in my family knows about the car and the bullet hole, then it’ll put you and your grandfather at risk. Even if they don’t know now, they will. Everyone will know that I found the car, that I brought it here. I’ll just drive back and tell them you couldn’t help me with it. That’s for the best.”

He was jumpy and paranoid as hell, but she couldn’t blame him for that. “Don’t you have anyone who can… help with this?”

“No.”

Author’s Note: I had a bit of this in mind from the beginning, though the characters took it in a bit of a different direction from what I’d planned. That’s okay, though. It more than works.

A Real Find

“Excuse me. I think I’m lost.”

“Well, if you’re looking for the highway, it’s about thirty miles southwest of here, and the nearest gas station is another ten miles in either direction. If you wanted to get yourself lost, you picked a good place to do it.”

Carson nodded, trying to get a better look at the person under the truck. He hadn’t realized the overalls belonged to a woman until she spoke, and he didn’t know what to think now. That was what he got for trusting Carrie’s internet search. He should have looked the place up for himself because this could not be it. Another farm, rundown and ramshackle, holding on because of a family’s sheer stubbornness, not because this kind of work turned any kind of profit. Judging from the truck she was working on, this place had seen its last heyday when his grandfather’s had—more than forty years ago.

“I know where the highway is. I think I got bad directions. I came out here looking for Mac Gilreath. I guess he has some kind of… auto restoration place, but my sister-in-law must have been mistaken.”

“Why, because she’s a woman?”

“Um,” he said, hoping he wasn’t about to get involved in some kind of debate over sexism because he didn’t have the brain for it at the moment. “No, because I’m not entirely sure she likes me. I kind of—Well, to put it mildly, most of my family thinks I’m one step away from the looney bin.”

The woman slid out from under the truck, studying him. Her hair was covered by a scarf that was more grease black than the blue of the fabric, and she seemed smaller now that he could see more of her, a trick of the shadow under the truck and her overalls, a set he didn’t figure had always belonged to her. “You don’t look like some kind of psycho, but then looks can be deceiving.”

He forced a smile. “Yeah, that’s true. Is there anyone named Gilreath around here or am I on a wild goose chase?”

The woman dragged herself up from the ground, and now he knew why her bandana wasn’t the stereotypical red—it would have clashed with that hair of hers, a shade that crimson had to be dyed, right?

“I’m not sure if I should hit you or not.”

“Why would you hit me?”

She held out a hand. “Mac Gilreath. Should I call you a chauvinist now or later?”

He grimaced. “Sorry. I had no idea. Carrie gave me a name and an address, and I made a bad assumption. I didn’t look up the information myself, I should have, and I shouldn’t have—Okay, on that note, I’m going to leave. We’ll just… forget I was that stupid and call it a day.”

“Well, to be perfectly honest, the original Mac is, in fact, a man, and he would have been around if you’d come a few minutes earlier, but he’s of the old generation, you know. Church on Sunday, like clockwork.” She shrugged, wiping her hands on a rag. “I’m Mackenna, his granddaughter. So… you did come all the way out here, and most people don’t. What were you interested seeing Grandpa about?”

Carson gestured to the trailer. “That. Apparently, I got left that by my grandfather, and I have no idea what to do with it.”

She put a hand to her head, knocking the scarf off as she moved closer to the trailer. “Wow. Where was this?”

“In his barn.”

“Right. Should have known. You can see the effect of the animals on the paint. Here and there. Their sweat does things to a car after years in storage,” she said, running a hand along the fender. “This is almost all original, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. You’re guess is a hell of a lot better than mine.”

She shook her head. “A near complete Maxwell, probably… 1908, maybe 1909. This is incredible.”

“This is… complete? My brothers figured it was junk.”

“Your brothers are idiots.”

“I won’t argue that.”

She looked up from the car with a grin, but her attention went back to it a moment later. “It doesn’t look like much, not like this, but this is a find, Mister…?”

“Koslow. Carson Koslow.” He gave the car another frown. “I don’t have the money to restore it. I know that. I guess I was just hoping to find someone who could tell me about what it’s worth and help me get a fair price for it.”

“You’d sell it? Just like that?”

He let out a breath. “I… I don’t know. I’m not sure why my grandfather left me it. None of us even knew he had it, and I thought—Never mind. That’s a long story I won’t bore you with.”

“Okay, fine. Just tell me the story behind this.”

Carson stared at the hole that she’d pointed out, a strange gap in the frame. “I… You’re the mechanic. That’s… rust, right? Went through the fender there. I mean, that metal looks kind of flimsy compared to what we have, so it must be.”

She shook her head. “Flimsy metal’s got nothing to do with rust, and I would have said that was a bullet hole, but that’s me.”

Author’s Note: So… There may or may not be progress happening…

Unsolicited Aid

“Here.”

“What’s this?”

“The name and address of the closest antique car specialist I could find. The website had a picture of a car like the one you just found, so maybe that’s enough,” Carrie said, sitting down next to Carson. “Nick and Larry went to borrow the Steadmans’ trailer so that they could load up that wreck onto it and drive it over there first thing in the morning.”

“It’ll be Sunday. That place will be closed.”

“I’m sure you can get them to give you a few minutes of your time, and the last thing you want to do is leave anything here. Your uncle is overreacting to the will—so much so that I’d almost have started to believe that he had some part in this imaginary murder of yours—but while he’s out blowing off steam is the best time for you to deal with everything. Then you can go and let things settle down again.”

“Like I did when I went to college, you mean?”

Carrie let out a breath. “You know that everyone needed time to cool down after that. There were a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of anger and plenty of frustration. Your nightmares tried to tear this family apart, Carson. Now that your grandfather is gone, it needs time to heal all over again.”

He stared at the table, though he’d long since memorized the grain of the wood. The furniture was older than he was, and he’d been able to spend more hours than he wanted sitting right here, stubbornly refusing to eat asparagus. “I didn’t ask for the nightmares. You think I want to believe that someone killed my father and that same someone was in my family? I know Grandpa and Uncle Tim hated him for abandoning all of us. I know Nick and Larry hate him for the same reason. I never knew him, and I don’t see how I could have made all of that up, but even if I did, the images are so vivid for me… They never fade, they never go away. I’m either crazy or I don’t remember enough, but unless Dad walks in the door alive, you’re going to have a very hard time convincing me that he’s not dead.”

She put a hand on his arm. “I know. Have you ever considered hiring a detective or befriending a cop who might research him for you, even just a little?”

“I don’t make that kind of money. I’m still paying off my loans for college, and you know me. I don’t make friends easy. I did google him, for all the good it did me. There’s no record of him after he left here. He could have changed his name, I guess, and I don’t know how to look for someone who has done that.”

“Of course not. You’re not a detective.”

Carson pushed back his chair and rose. He was sick of being told that, too. They’d joked for years about him going into law enforcement because of his nightmares, most of the time in a scornful way, saying he couldn’t handle it, and he didn’t want to go into that again. He wasn’t obsessed with this, but he wanted his answers. He wanted to put it all behind him. “I’m going to go take advantage of the fact that Uncle Tim is gone and get in a quick shower.”

“Carson.”

He stopped in the doorway, looking back at her. “What?”

“When was the last time that you saw your counselor? You are still seeing one, aren’t you?”

He swallowed. He didn’t want to go into that, either. Some people liked to mock him for seeing one when he was younger, and if they weren’t mocking him, they were asking why the doctors hadn’t “fixed” him yet. All it would take was the right drugs and all the issues that Carson had would vanish. He’d be normal, the kind of brother they’d wanted all along. He had gone off the meds and stopped seeing the counselor years ago, but if he said that, they’d start treating him like he was a danger to himself and everyone else, watching him, trying to make sure he didn’t turn into one of those lone gunmen that killed people for no reason.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“I have an apartment, a steady job, and I’m about to get promoted. I don’t—Grandpa’s death brought it all up again. That’s all. I haven’t had nightmares in years, though I’m sure I’ll have one tonight.”

“Just be careful. This obsession wrecked your life before, and it could do it again.”

Author’s Note: So… There was an idea behind this that involved this part of things, but I admit, I hesitated when I got to it, thinking maybe I should go in a different direction. I didn’t. I’ll see how this plays out.

Behind Door Number One

“Is it a body?”

“Carson, you still alive over there? Did it scare you to death? Come on.”

“I suppose it can’t be a body by now. It would have to be a skeleton, if there was one. Oh, if I’d have known that Grandpa was planning this, I think I might just have stashed one. Look at how he reacted when there wasn’t one. I should have been recording this.

“Shut up, Nick.” Carson pulled himself to his feet, using Larry to support him as he did. Somehow, he’d been convinced that when he opened that door, he’d have all the answers he ever wanted. He’d lay to rest all the old doubts—they’d have their father’s body and they’d know not only what happened to him but where all the ideas had come from. It wasn’t that far-fetched. He could have seen his father here sometime. If he’d come back when Carson was older, still a child but old enough to burn that memory into his mind, it would explain everything, take away the doubts and the fears from so long ago, give him a peace he’d never known.

Every time he thought that he had put this behind him, it would come back, just as strong as ever.

He didn’t know why he found it so easy to believe his grandfather was a murderer or that his father was dead, and he didn’t know why that he would have assumed the answer was behind that door. It wasn’t like they couldn’t have come out here and emptied it out years ago.

Oh, yeah, and when the nightmares were at their worst, his grandfather had persuaded the sheriff to do him a favor and they’d gotten trained cadaver dogs out here to search every acre of the farm. They hadn’t found anything, and if there’d been something shut behind that door, they would have known before now.

“Well, look at him. He’s acting like he just saw Dad’s ghost or something, but we both know he didn’t. There’s no skeleton, Larry.” Nick shook his head as he forced the door further open, letting more light into the shed. “Not a human one, at least. Damn, is that… a car?”

“You think that thing ever ran? I’ve got to say, I have my doubts,” Larry said as he walked forward, bumping Carson as he did. “Come on. You don’t have to keep staring like the bogeyman’s going to come jump out at you. It’s just more junk. Sorry.”

“Blame it on the heat, buddy. Just blame it on the heat and working all day.”

“Yeah, like you two would let me do that,” Carson said, stepping forward to put his hand on the brass, knowing it was way past tarnished already. “What kind of car is a Maxwell, anyway?”

“You’ve got me. Never heard of anything like that. The parts might be worth more, though, so hey, maybe you lucked out a little.”

“Not so loud,” Larry said. “If Uncle Tim thinks Carson got anything of value, he’ll be even more pissed off. You’d think it wouldn’t matter, giving up a few things, but he just about lost it when he heard Carson’s bequest.”

“It’s not like he was fighting over this, though. I don’t think it has all its parts, not with the hood missing, and look at those seats. I bet rats have been at them. It’s only going to be worth something to a collector, if at all.”

“Well, there’s still his small fortune in scrap metal. That’s worth more than the dishes you got.”

“Shut up,” Carson said, frustration getting the better of him. “I don’t care about the money. Maybe a part of me wanted an inheritance, but I was hoping for some kind of… legacy, something that meant something, not a fortune. I know there’s not one of them out there for any of us, and we all knew that going into the will reading. If there was anything I wanted out of here, it was answers. All I’ve got now is more questions.”

Larry put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe the answers you need were never here.”

Author’s Note: Nick’s theory makes a certain sort of sense.

Reasons to Open the Door

“I’ve got it figured out. I know why Grandpa left you the stuff in the barn.”

“You do, do you? Enlighten me,” Carson said, wiping a rag across his forehead. He didn’t really care why his grandfather had done it, not anymore. Nick’s presence would have been a whole more useful if he’d done something to help with the giant mess that Carson had been dealing with for the past four hours. He didn’t want to look at any longer, but he had to be back in the city tomorrow, so the more he got done now, the better.

He at least wanted to clear a path to the locked door. If all he managed to do today was get that open, that was enough for him. He wanted to make sure he saw that before anyone had a chance to mess with what might be in there.

That door could hold the key to answers he’d wanted all his life. It could be hiding his father’s remains. At this point, Carson had no way of knowing what was in there, but at the same time, he didn’t plan on quitting before he found out.

And behind door number one… nothing, he thought, but he shook it off and looked over at his brother. With his light hair and bright blue eyes, Nick had the strongest resemblance to their mother, whereas Larry looked like a younger version of Grandpa and Carson got cursed—he was a near replica of the man everyone hated.

Maybe that was why he was so obsessed with this idea of his father being dead. Otherwise, the man he kept seeing out here was… himself. He’d never believed in visions, had no intention of starting, but he did think maybe he was going to crack under the pressure again. The first time had been a few weeks before the valedictorian speech he never made, and this could be similar. He was up for promotion, after all, and that meant more hours, more responsibility, more room for failure.

“We should just have named you after someone who went into space. That’s all you ever do.”

“Hey, I told you to enlighten me. It’s not my fault you overplayed the dramatic pause and ruined everything. I got bored. So sue me.”

“That would be Larry.”

“No, that would be Larry’s ex. She was the lawyer.”

“Must you do that?”

“Bad habit, I guess. Come on, Nick. I’m tired. I don’t want to do this all day. I’ve got a bit left to go before I get to that door, and that’s where I’m quitting. I just want to get that door open.”

“Exactly.”

Carson reached for a contorted piece of metal, not sure what it had ever been a part of, pointing it at his brother. “Either tell me or go, but if you don’t spit it out soon, something like this just might connect with the side of your head because this is getting ridiculous.”

“Fine, fine. Look, Grandpa gave you everything out here so that you’d have to go through every nook and cranny of this place, so that you’d have to see everything for what it is, but more importantly, for what it isn’t. It’s not evidence. It’s junk. Even if you get that door open, you’re not going to find a body. You’re not going to find a murder. Maybe this will finally allow you to put all those old nightmares behind you so that you can move on. You’ll get to be normal—well, for you that might be too much to ask—”

Carson lifted the scrap, giving it a swing that missed his brother, not that he’d meant to hit him. He didn’t want to hurt Nick, not really. He was just tired and frustrated, and he didn’t think anyone did well being teased when they were in a mood like this.

“All right, truce, you two. I can’t believe I have to play peacemaker again,” Larry called as he walked up to them. He yanked the metal from Carson’s hand, and Carson glared at him. “Don’t. You’re too wound up to argue.”

“Nick already told you his theory, didn’t he?”

“Of course.”

“So you think that’s why Grandpa did it, too, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Carson shrugged. He picked up the old lopper and carried it over to the door. He studied the old lock for a moment, not sure if a moment like this needed some kind of… ceremony. He could just put the blade on and see if it was sharp enough to do any damage. Somehow he felt like he was on the verge of some big discovery—and yet this could be one of those moments where the vault was empty and he got nothing but humiliation for the rest of his life. Since he’d done that enough already with two older brothers, he figured it wasn’t worth the risk.

“You don’t have to do that tonight.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“You sure you don’t want to sleep on it? You’ve got no idea what’s in there, after all, so…”

Carson shook his head. “No, it’s past time I do. If Nick’s right, and this is going to get me past all those old questions and nightmares and help me let go of all those images in my head, that’s what I have to do. Here goes nothing.”

He put the blade to the padlock, forcing it shut over the thinnest part of the metal, and it gave, cutting through. The old lock fell into the dirt, and Carson stared at it before setting down the shears. He pried the bar up, moving it clear and then tugged on the handle, pulling the door toward him.

After so many years of disuse, it didn’t move fast, not until an extra yank gave it a sudden momentum that knocked him on the ground. He heard his brothers laughing, but he forced himself to ignore it.

Not that it was hard to do. All he could do was stare at the gaping darkness in the doorway before him.

Author’s Note: It may be that I might have to commission my friend who does western art to do a painting of the type of barn I had in mind when I started this story. I can picture it, but a search through my photographs of the old family farm and the ones that came up on google didn’t quite match what I had in mind. If I were to dig up the last barn I drew, it would be laughable at best.

We’ll see. Having that picture might not be necessary. It depends on how this story continues to develop.

A Certain Kind of Daydream

“Water?”

“Thanks, Carrie,” Carson said, accepting the glass from his sister-in-law. She gave him a smile, pushing back some of her hair, looking more like she’d been the one sorting through the barn than he did. Then again, he hadn’t made a lot of progress, spending more of his time standing out here studying it like he expected inspiration to hit him so that he’d understand what his grandfather was doing by leaving him all of this.

If his grandfather had been behind his father’s death—if his father was even dead—then maybe this was his backward way of confessing, but why wouldn’t he just have put that in the will? In a letter for them to read after he was gone?

By the way, I’m dying so now I can admit that I killed him, and I’m not sorry. I did it for my daughter and grandsons, and I’d do it again. I’m only admitting it now because by the time anyone reads this, I’ll be dead.

“Carson?”

“Sorry. Daydreaming again. Bad habit of mine.”

“I don’t think daydreaming is the right word for what you’ve been doing,” she told him, folding her arms over her chest. She shook her head. “That didn’t look like any kind of ‘dream’ to me, more like a nightmare, and it always does when your mind starts wandering. What makes you so quick to go to the darkness, anyway?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m a born pessimist. Why not? My father took off when I was born, so that’s not a very auspicious way to start life, now is it?”

“I suppose not, but you don’t have to let it rule your life, either. Plenty of people do just fine with only one parent, and your grandfather more than made up for your father taking off. Larry and Nick, they’re angry about the whole thing, but you, you turn it into something frightening. A murder.”

“I don’t know that it had to be murder. I know it’s crazy. I know they did everything to prove that I never saw what I thought I saw. Maybe it’s just my mind’s way of coping with the fact that he’s not a part of my life. I mean, he’s been as good as dead for almost thirty years. Picturing him that way isn’t that unreasonable.” Carson took another sip of the water and then turned it around in the glass, feeling like he was stalling, but he didn’t know why he’d do that. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have, and he didn’t need Nick’s wife mothering him, either. He would get back to work in a minute. “It’s just being out here again. It’s been a long time since I thought about it—too much work, never the time to spare to drive out all this way—and so I haven’t been here in almost a year. Hadn’t seen Grandpa in that long, either, and now he’s gone. Grief works in strange ways.”

Carrie looked at him. “You work in strange ways, Carson.”

He grunted, setting down the water and picking up the pitchfork. He had to deal with the hay first—he was letting his uncle keep anything that was worth using—and then he could start uncovering the stuff he would need to make a decision about. The worst part would be behind the doors in the back, a closet of sorts that he didn’t think had been opened in his entire lifetime. “Anyone find the keys yet?”

“No.”

“Probably have to break the lock.”

“Your uncle won’t like that.”

“So he won’t like it. I know he’s pissed about me getting everything in the barn. It was the lawyer who said I got any of the animals in here, not me, and I already told him I’d give them to him since they belong on the farm. I wouldn’t have a place for them, and I don’t have time to care for him. I told him he could have the hay, too. Didn’t make him any happier.”

It almost made Carson wonder if his uncle had secrets to hide out here, if that was why he was so upset about Carson getting all this, but he was tired of his own paranoia. He had no reason to believe that anything had happened out here. He did not need to make this situation worse by voicing any of his suspicions or even by thinking too much about them. He’d done enough to alienate his family already.

“You don’t have to do this all today, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You’re going to try and do it anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.”

Author’s Note: This is something I started a very, very long time ago, but I didn’t get past the opening scene. I looked at the words for this week’s Three Word Wednesday, and I thought it would be perfect to use them to get the scene finished at last. Also, it might just be a new serial I can keep for the prompts rather than use something in progress or something with spoilers. 🙂

Today’s words: cumbersome, morbid, and rampage.

Some Inheritance

He’d always wanted to inherit something, though if he was perfectly honest about it, he had hoped it would be more like money or a valuable antique, not this. Dear Carson, love you. Have everything in the barn.

The barn. Great. Moldy hay and rusted old equipment. Some inheritance this was… He was going to spend weeks cleaning this out, and it wouldn’t even be worth it when it was done. Maybe the money from the scrap metal would be something, but not much.

Sometimes it just didn’t pay to be the favorite grandson.

He looked at the barn again. Someone shoot him. He should just pay someone to take it all away, not even bother to try and sort it out. The place looked like the nearest junkyard had been hit by a tornado and its rampage had dumped everything it picked up right here. For him.

Why had he been the one to get this crap? His brothers weren’t going to appreciate anything they’d gotten, but he had special memories of everything on the farm.

“Dude, I thought the old man liked you. You got screwed.”

“Thanks a lot.”

His older brother laughed, clapping him on the back. “Everyone thought he was going to leave you the farm, not just the barn. You’re the one that put the most time into this place.”

“It is not about time. It was about Grandpa, about being with him. I didn’t come here and log hours or anything like that. It wasn’t so I’d get the farm.”

“Still sucks that he gave you this. I mean, his farm truck is a piece of crap, but I at least got something that moves. You got… junk.”

“Why does this matter so much to you? You got what you wanted. You will drive that old truck until it dies, and you’ll love it. Why not harass Nick about getting the dishes?”

“Because we all know that Nick got the dishes because of his wife. She wanted all that china. You did not want this.”

“I might have something in here that’s better than anything you two got combined. Besides, it’s not like any of us would really have gotten the house or the land. That’s all Uncle Tim’s because he still carries that oh so important name. We’re Mom’s kids, yeah, but we have Dad’s name.”

“Which makes no sense. Dad took off when you were born.”

“Gee, thanks for reminding me that I’m the reason our family broke up,” Carson muttered. He knew it didn’t really matter, that his brother didn’t actually mean it like that. Larry was still angry with their father for leaving and their mother for being unable to move on. She used to wait up nights for her husband’s return, but he never came back. He may as well have been dead for the past twenty-nine years, since none of them ever heard from him again.

An image of his father’s face, one Carson had only ever seen in pictures, lying dead on the dirt floor of the barn came to him. He thought it unlikely that there was a skeleton hidden back in the barn, but it wasn’t the first time that crossed his mind. What if someone had decided his father should never come back? Maybe it was just that last bit of denial, a childish hope that his father had not abandoned them talking. He didn’t know why he cared. He had never known the man and could only regret the fact of not knowing him. His brothers and grandfather and even his uncle had nothing to say about the man except that he was a bastard for leaving.

“What is that look?” Larry asked, frowning a little. Carson turned toward him.

“What look?”

“That one, the one where you’re a million miles away. You’re being morbid again. For the last time, Dad did not die out here; no one in our family killed him. He was just a bastard who ran off and left us. You know that as well as I do. You’re not going to ask the sheriff for cadaver dogs again, are you? We already did that once.”

“I know.” While he’d never felt like he was in danger, not once when spending time with his grandfather and he wasn’t afraid of the farm, the words did little to ease the cumbersome weight of those old fears. He didn’t know why he seemed unable to let go of that image of his father or the idea of the man being murdered.

Morbid, yeah. The sooner he emptied out the barn and dealt with his “inheritance,” the better.