Chapter 1 Family is rarely convenient. Case in point: Uncle Obadiah Horace Pickwick. Despite his summons to discuss his will, likely brought on by hospitalization for chest pains, I won’t be flying to Pickwick, North Carolina. As I explained to his ancient attorney before he put me on hold, as much as I like my uncle, I can’t get out from under my work load on such short notice.
Of course, neither am I ready to return to the town I escaped twelve years ago.
Staring at the phone on my desk, I will Artemis Bleeker to return to the line, but the music continues to drone from the speakerphone. Whine, whine. “Oh ma darlin’…” Groan, groan. “You left me standin’ here…” Wah, wah. “Left me starin’ after you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I flop back in my chair. “Cry me a river.”
“Well, ma dear”—the nasal voice drops several octaves—“I’m back.”
I roll my eyes. “Nice lyrics.”
“What’d ya say, Piper?”
It’s him! I grab the receiver. “Mr. Bleeker—”
“You’re no longer a little girl, Piper Pickwick. Do address me by ma first name.”
As he had asked me to do when I took his call, after which I politely informed him I had dropped the “Pick” part of my name. Though he spluttered over my “butcherin’ ” of the family name, I didn’t defend myself. But had I, my defense would have been based more on the Pickwicks’ scandalous reputation than on the nursery rhyme alliteration that plagued me through my school years.
Piper
Wick clears her throat. “Thank you, Artemis. I’ll try to remember that. So you said the doctors are runningmore tests to determine the cause of Uncle Obe’s chest pains.”
“They are, but your uncle is certain it’s heart failure. And a man knows his own body. Um-hmm.”
“But so far the tests have come back negative.”
“These things can be elusive.”
Especially when it’s simply indigestion. Certain that has to be it, I’m relieved. I spent little time in my uncle’s presence, but he was never unkind to me, unlike the other Pickwicks.
You are over that. It’s Uncle Obe we’re talking about—a black sheep like you. True, not only did he increasingly shun society the older he got, even forgoing marriage, but unlike his three brothers, he was always upstanding. Not a smidgen of inappropriate behavior—at least in the “criminal” sense. Now in the “odd” sense…
“Uh, what was Uncle Obe doing when he started having chest pains?”
“Just sittin’ in his hospital bed watchin’ a rerun—”
“He was in the hospital when he started to have chest pains?”
“What?” Artemis barks. “Ya think a man his age survives such a terrible accident without payin’ a price?”
Where is Scripture when I need it? Not committed to memory like I encourage my Christian clients. Fortunately, something of an alternative exists, Band-Aid strength though it may be: close eyes, breathe slowly through the nose, exhale slowly from the mouth…
“Piper! Did I lose ya?”
I clap a hand to my chest. Was Artemis booming when Uncle Obe’s chest pains started? “I’m just wondering why you didn’t say anything about an accident.”
“’Course I did.”
He’s old. Very old. And should have retired from practicing law years ago! “I’m sorry, but would you go over it again?”
He sighs. “Your uncle was in a head-on.”
Dear Lord! “He was thrown clear but sustained cuts and bruises and messed up his knee. Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well for Roy. He had to be put down.”
“What?”
“Cryin’ shame. Of course, he wasn’t much use, what with them cataracts and that incontinence problem.”
Hold up. This is Pickwick, North Carolina. All is not as it seems. “Is Roy a…dog?”
“Ya all right, Piper? You’re not into drugs like all them folks out there in Hollywood, are ya?”
I will not bang my head. “It’s been a long day. So Uncle Obe hit a dog with his car.”
“Ya don’t listen too well, do ya? He hit the dog with his
golf cart.”
Right.
“Musta been goin’ fifteen miles an hour. Traumatized your uncle, it did. The good news is, if he has to undergo heart surgery, the prognosis is good.”
I throw my hands up. “How can it be good if the doctors don’t know what’s causing the chest pain?”
“Why, he’s in good health.”
Sighing, I pull my desk calendar forward, and in the middle of June 3, I jot a note to send flowers. “I’m glad the prognosis is good.”
“For the surgery. But as for his will…ain’t nobody can talk him out of it. Nobody but you, maybe.”
Here we go again. “Talk him out of what?”
“The changes to his will. Your family is up in arms.”
Family. Hardly. “I assume it affects them monetarily.”
“It does.”
“Then he’s cutting them out of his will?”
“’Course not! He means to provide for his Pickwick kin, but he’s got it in his head to make provision for others.”
Up in arms is putting it mildly. “Uncle Obe’s money is his to do with as he sees fit, so even if I could influence him, it’s not my business.”
“If the changes to his will become public knowledge—and they will once he passes away—it’s gonna be as much your business as your kin’s.”
Public knowledge gives me pause. But then, in light of the business I’m in and that the words were spoken in the context of the Pickwicks, they should. “Go on.”
“Even if the integrity of your inheritance don’t mean nothin’ to ya, I’m sure your reputation does.”
My reputation? Considering how far I’ve distanced myself from my family, that doesn’t seem possible, and yet… What have they done now? More, how might this affect Grant?
Recently, a columnist noted that I’m the first woman he’s seen regularly in a while. “Business,” Grant had assured everyone. And it’s true. Grant hired my PR firm to aid in his reelection, resulting in trips between our office in L.A. and his headquarters in Denver. But now there’s a personal component to my relationship with U.S. Congressman Grant Spangler.
I look at the photo on my desk that shows us at a fund-raiser months back. We stood before a dozen of his supporters—well, nearly so. The woman in the crooked blond wig (chemo, she said) asked some tough questions, her New England accent setting her apart from the others. Though she warmed to Grant, her body language said she wasn’t convinced. But you can’t make all the people happy all the time.
“Did ya hear me, Piper?”
“I heard you.” I slide my gaze to Grant. At five foot ten, he stood lean and erect beside me. At five foot three, I stood passably fit beside him, curves contained by regular exercise and close monitoring of calories, jaunty red hair limp, smile tired. To Piper, Grant scrawled across the bottom of the photo. We make a good team.
“All right, Artemis, tell me about the will.”
“Well, see, the changes are confessional in nature.”
My uncle has something to confess? Whatever it is—watering his garden during the hottest part of the day or breaking up a family of earthworms to plant a rosebush—it can’t be scandal worthy. “What does Uncle Obe have to confess?”
“Vandalism.”
So he ran over a road marker with his golf cart.
“Cheatin’.”
Probably skim-read a novel.
“Tax evasion.”
Bought Girl Scout cookies and believes he should have paid tax.
“Theft.”
Took a fund-raising mint at the cash register thinking it was free.
“Illegitimate children.”
I cannot have heard right. “Surely you’re not saying that the one irreproachable son of Gentry Pickwick fathered children out of wedlock?”
“I am. Your uncle has a daughter and a son not much older than you.”
Oh, dear. “So there’s something to these confessions? And Uncle Obe is responsible?”
“Yes and no. They’re serious wrongs, but he ain’t responsible for them all. For instance, the cheatin’ was done by your great-granddaddy when he won that big piece of land from the Calhouns back in the early 1900s.”
“That was just an ugly rumor.”
“Your Uncle Obadiah believes different. And if he provides for the Calhoun descendants in his will, it’s gonna be seen as true. Just as it’s gonna be believed your daddy conned Widow Stanley into investing her life savings in a shrimp farm that didn’t exist. As for the town square statue that w...
