The Legacy, Caroline Bond [popular books to read txt] 📗

‘Sorry.’ He didn’t look it.

Liv popped the button on the blue folder and withdrew the financial breakdown that she’d put together from the information the solicitor had provided, and from what she’d managed to find in her father’s files. The files that Megan had finally given up, after being asked firmly and directly for them. Chloe really needed to work on her communication skills. The breakdown was an incomplete picture; quite a number of the headings had question marks against them, and a lot of the figures were very rough estimates, but they were thought-through guesses. It had taken her a lot of time and effort to put it together, working in the quiet kitchen while everyone else slept. Everyone except Megan, that is. She’d appeared downstairs at 7 a.m., dressed in the same, or possibly a different, shapeless dress-and-sad-cardigan combo. She’d been surprised to find the kitchen occupied, looked aggrieved and made a silent, overly polite performance of withdrawing.

‘Shit, you have been busy, haven’t you?’ Noah eyed the documents.

Liv ignored him. ‘Well, I thought it was important that we had at least a rough idea of the value of Dad’s financial assets before we got into it.’ She saw that both of her siblings had turned to the last page of her notes, zeroing in on the estimated total.

Simultaneously Chloe said, ‘Wow’ and Noah said, ‘Um.’

Liv felt defensive. ‘I’ve put in an educated guess for the house, and I’m waiting to get access to his current and savings accounts.’ Megan had yet to give her the key card and the passcodes, despite promising that she would. ‘The big unknown is the size of Dad’s pension pot. He had a couple of different policies. I’ve chased them, but there’s a lot of money-laundering checks to go through before they’ll release any information.’

‘You think we should sell the house straight away?’ said Chloe.

‘Of course we’ll sell it. What else would we do with it?’ Noah responded.

‘Hang on. Can we all just take a breath,’ Liv said. They looked at her, Chloe concertedly, Noah sporadically – his eyes kept returning to the breakdown of assets. Liv needed them both to focus. They only had two days to devise a plan, and time was ticking, but they had to be logical. Whatever they agreed this weekend, she needed it to stick. She couldn’t face going round after round on this, not in her current state. ‘Maybe it’s best if we talk about what’s in the will, before we get down to looking at the finances.’ She stopped and waited for one of them to take up the conversation. Neither did. Again the responsibility of it all pressed down on her. She took her copy of Jonathan’s will out of the green file. Colour-coding helped to keep her thoughts organised and her stress levels manageable – and green was a calming colour. ‘What did you guys think when the solicitor explained what Dad had said?’

Chloe took a swig of her coffee before answering. ‘I suppose I was a bit surprised. But there again, I don’t know what I was expecting. It wasn’t something I’d given much thought to.’

‘Really?’ Noah asked.

Chloe looked rattled to be challenged by Noah. ‘No.’

‘Even with his diagnosis?’

‘No!’ She said it more firmly. ‘Day-to-day he seemed to be coping. And in the last couple of months he seemed on better form. Not well, obviously, but happier in himself, less frustrated. He was relatively stable, healthwise. So no, what he’d written in his will, as you very well know, wasn’t a top priority for me. I wasn’t thinking about Dad dying, I was helping him to live.’

Liv wondered what the two of them had been talking about together, in the garage, without her.

‘Hey. Lighten up. It wasn’t a priority for me, either.’ Noah poured himself a glass of water and glugged half of it down. ‘I’m just saying that I knew he thought about what would happen after he died, quite a lot.’

‘How?’ It was Liv’s turn.

Noah finished his drink. ‘Cos he mentioned it every now and again.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Well, only that he was putting everything in order for us.’

‘Us?’

‘Yes. Us. Me. Whatever. The implication was that it was sorted.’

‘Well, it isn’t, is it?’ Liv said.

Noah pulled a face, somewhere between a smile and a frown. ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be complicated. He had three children. He explicitly left the division of the estate to us. That would imply, to me anyway, that his priority was to see that we were all okay.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, if you want me to get straight to it… a three-way spilt between us of the bulk of the estate, with something for Mum and something for Megan, maybe.’ The bald statement of his opinion didn’t surprise Liv. Noah liked to keep things simple, even when they weren’t. But it was interesting that Chloe wasn’t disagreeing with him, and even Liv herself didn’t really know what to say by way of a valid argument. ‘Am I wrong?’ Noah asked.

‘What do you mean by “something for Megan… maybe”? She was his partner, whether we like that or not. She was the one who cared for Dad when he got sick. Was there for him at the end. And this is her home. We have a responsibility to think about what’s going to happen to her,’ Liv said.

‘It’s her home – for now.’ Noah was the king of reductive thinking.

‘Jeez, Noah. He’s only been dead twelve days and you’re already talking about throwing her out on the street.’

‘Stop being so melodramatic. You know full well that I don’t mean right this minute.’ Noah tipped his chair back and balanced it precariously on its rear legs, like he used to when he was a teenager. ‘But that’s the whole point of this bloody weekend, isn’t it? To get everything agreed, so that we can all go back to our lives.’

Chloe suddenly spoke up. ‘You both seem to be forgetting that this is my home as well. Where am I