A chance inheritance, p.1
A Chance Inheritance, page 1
Thank you for downloading this Sourcebooks eBook!
You are just one click away from…
• Being the first to hear about author happenings
• VIP deals and steals
• Exclusive giveaways
• Free bonus content
• Early access to interactive activities
• Sneak peeks at our newest titles
Happy reading!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Books. Change. Lives.
A Chance Inheritance © 2021, 2023 by Carolyn Brown
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover images © Agnes Kantaruk/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
A Chance Inheritance was originally published in 2021 by Audible Originals.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Excerpt from The Next Best Day
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
To my friend,
Sharon Sala
Chapter 1
Lainie Cornell was a real runaway bride. She had crawled out the window of the country club, gotten into her car, and driven all the way from Dallas to Houston before she stopped and finally answered her father’s call.
She had no doubts that she was doing the right thing. When it came right down to it, she didn’t love Eli, and she hated the way he tried to dominate her. But to wait until the minute she was to walk down the aisle was unforgivable. She knew that.
Her two cousins, Becky and Jodi, had been her bridesmaids, and they had already made their way down the aisle to the front of the church when Lainie decided to run.
She promised herself that she would call each of them and apologize for embarrassing them so badly, but not until a couple of days had passed. It would take that long for Becky to stop cussing loud enough to melt the stained-glass windows in the church. Jodi would be angry for maybe the rest of the day and a night, but then she would understand, or at least Lainie thought she would. No doubt about it though, today was not the time to try to explain why she had taken off to any of them.
She checked into the cheap, no-tell motel still wearing her wedding dress, but she had tossed the veil and bouquet out the window somewhere south of Waco.
She answered the twentieth—or was it the twenty-fifth?—call from her father.
“Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I just couldn’t marry Eli even if—”
When her father was angry, he whispered. She could barely hear him when he said, “Wherever you are, you have responsibilities, so get your ass home.”
“I’ve got to get things sorted out,” she said. “I’ll come back to Dallas when I—”
“You will come back right now,” her father butted in before she could finish.
She ended the call and turned off her phone for two days. When she turned it back on, she had four missed calls and two voicemail messages from her cousin Becky telling her that Granny Lizzie’s will had been read and that Lainie had inherited one-third of both the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut and Granny Lizzie’s house, which was located right beside it. She dried her eyes, forced herself to stop crying, and called Becky.
Lainie told her cousin she’d be there before supper, and then she took a quick shower, got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and picked up the garment bag holding her wedding dress and took it out to her car first. The thing filled the whole back seat. She didn’t ever plan on wearing it again, but she just couldn’t leave it behind. She went back inside her dingy little room and hauled out her two hot-pink suitcases, which contained everything she needed for a honeymoon in the Colorado mountains. The third trip back into the room was just to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind.
Before she left, she checked her reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Her black hair still had droplets of water hanging on her ponytail, and her green eyes had dark circles around them. She should stop by Dallas and try to explain how she felt to Eli, but her hands trembled at the thought of facing him.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter if I look like crap. I’m going to Catfish, Texas, to work in a bait shop. I’m not having dinner tonight with the queen, not even if Becky acts like she is royalty.” She left the room key on the nightstand and locked the door behind her, got into her little red sports car, and headed north toward the Red River.
“I love you, Granny Lizzie,” Lainie sobbed as she drove. “Why did you have to die right before my wedding? I needed you to be there to tell me that marriage was tough enough when a woman loves a man, and impossible if she doesn’t.”
I was there in spirit, and I think you got the message. The voice in Lainie’s head was as clear as if her grandmother had been sitting right beside her.
She didn’t like the idea of working in the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut or living with her two older, bossy cousins, but that was better than going back to Dallas. She hadn’t even gotten out of Houston when the phone rang. She sucked in a lungful of air and hit the accept button.
“Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I’m on my way to Granny Lizzie’s place. She’s left it to us three girls.”
“That’s probably for the best,” he said. “Your mother has been crying one minute and then yelling the next since you ran away. She can’t even hold her head up at the country club. You’ve made a mess of things, Lainie. You could have had such a good life with Eli, so it seems fitting that you have to live on the river in little more than a slum. It would be best if you call before you come back to see us. Give us time to forgive you for embarrassing the hell out of us.”
“Yes, sir,” she said and ended the call.
She was almost to Conroe when her phone rang again. This time it was Eli, and she let it ring four times before she finally answered.
“I’m very disappointed and upset.” Eli’s big, booming voice startled her. “Why did you run away? I deserve an answer.”
“I figured out that I don’t love you,” she answered.
“Couldn’t you have figured it out a hell of a lot earlier?” His tone was so icy that it sent a shiver down Lainie’s spine.
“I did, but you are so controlling that you wouldn’t…” She pulled off at the next exit to get a cup of coffee.
“I wouldn’t what?” Eli demanded.
“Have let me break up with you,” she finished. “It’s over. I’m sorry I embarrassed everyone, but I’m not sorry I left. Goodbye.” She ended the call before he could say anything else.
“Granny understands why I ran away,” Lainie told herself as she parked and ran into the Love’s store for a cup of coffee. “I’ll try to suck it up and not gag at the smell of fish bait, but I’m not making any promises about getting along with Becky and Jodi. It would have been so much better if Granny Lizzie had left me money instead of a beer, bait, and bologna shop. Then I could have opened my own little restaurant anywhere other than Dallas and could have been happy working sixteen hours a day.”
Her phone rang just as she hit the Dallas noon traffic. When Becky’s name came up on the screen, Lainie sighed loudly, pushed the accept button, and said, “Hello, how are things in Catfish?”
“Jodi and I have been here since last night. I opened up the shop this morning, and everything is in a mess. Jodi is still in the house trying to get awake. Where in the hell are you?” Becky’s tone was covered with a thick layer of ice.
“Coming through Dallas,” Lainie answered. “According to the GPS, I should be there by two o’clock.”
“Well, don’t fart around,” Becky said. “I’ve decided that we’ll each take two days a week to open up the store at six in the morning, and whoever opens up can leave at three in the afternoon.”
“What gives you the right to make the rules?” Lainie asked.
“I’m the oldest, and I got here first, and I’ve been here at the shop since six this morning, and Jodi still isn’t here and it’s noon, and Granny Lizzie made me executor over everything,” Becky answered. “Do you need any more than that?”
“Who s going to kick Jodi out of bed at five thirty so she can get to the store by six on her two days?” Lainie asked.
“That’s your job,” Becky answered.
“You better think again on that issue. She’s always been a bear in the mornings, but we can talk about it when I get there,” Lainie said.
“Fair enough,” Becky said. “Be safe.”
“I’ll do my best,” Lainie said.
***
Jodi’s alarm had gone off at five thirty that morning, but she hadn’t even opened her eyes. She had just slapped it and gone right back to sleep. In ten minutes, it sounded again, so she reached down and unplugged the damned thing. When Becky beat on her door and demanded that she get up, she put a pillow over her head. After the first three times her phone rang, she turned it off.
Her internal clock awoke her at noon, just like always. For the past ten years, she’d worked as a beautician in a salon in Walmart that stayed open until ten o’clock at night. Her shift went from one to ten, so she was used to partying after work until the bars shut down and then sleeping until noon. If Becky expected her to get up before daylight, she had rocks for brains.
The only noise in the house was the sound of the window air-conditioning unit in the living room kicking on and off, and from outside the crunch of gravel on tires from cars and trucks passing by on their way to the store or the Red River. Somehow, the house had seemed bigger when she and her two cousins were kids. The place had a small living room, a tiny kitchen, and two bedrooms. One had been Granny Lizzie’s, and the other one had two sets of bunk beds in it.
Most of the time the cousins all came at the same time in the summer. Becky and Jodi were older than Lainie, so they claimed the top bunks, and she had to sleep on a bottom one. She whined about it, but then Lainie had always been the prissy one of the three of them. Jodi would have never thought that she would have the nerve to be a runaway bride.
Jodi rolled out of bed and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom. She brushed kinky blond hair up into a messy bun, and then headed to the kitchen. The coffeepot was still half-full, so she poured a mugful, heated it up in the microwave, and sat down at the table with it.
“At least Becky can’t fire me for being late,” she mumbled. In ten years she’d worked under three different owners at the beauty salon in Carrollton, Texas, and just last week the newest manager had fired her for being late too many times. “This place is one-third mine. If I choose to work my one-third of the day in the afternoon and evening, then it’s my choice.”
The house phone that hung on the wall right behind her head rang and startled her so badly that she spilled coffee all over her faded nightshirt. She picked up the receiver and said, “What do you want, Becky? You just made me dump a whole cup of hot coffee on my favorite shirt.”
“Did it burn you too bad to come to work?” Becky asked.
“No, it had cooled down a little. I told you when I first got here that I wasn’t getting up at that ungodly hour of the morning, so you can get your panties out of the wad they’re twisted up in and accept it. Where’s Lainie? Is she going to run out on us like she did the wedding? That was embarrassing, standing up there waiting and no bride coming down the aisle on Uncle John’s arm, wasn’t it?”
“Stop trying to sidestep the issue. Get dressed and come to the store. The coffeepot out here stays full all day, so you can have your morning cup when you get to work. There’s breakfast sandwiches in the freezer, so you can heat one of those in the microwave. This is the first day we’ve been open since Granny Lizzie died. It’s a mess, and customers are swarming the place. So, get your lazy ass in gear,” Becky said and hung up the phone.
Jodi reached behind her and put the receiver back where it belonged. She stood to her feet, whipped around, and saluted the gold-colored phone. “Yes, ma’am! I’ll get right on that, ma’am. Anything else you want to yell at me about, General Becky?”
She took a quick shower, tossed her nightshirt and the dirty clothing she’d brought with her in a garbage bag into the washing machine, and then got dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a clean shirt. The phone rang as she was leaving the house, but she didn’t answer it.
“I’m on my way,” she muttered. “At least General Becky can’t fire me.”
She walked across the yard, through the gate, and crossed the parking lot to the store. The name of the place, the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut, had been painted on the window more than fifty years ago when Granny Lizzie’s parents owned the place. A picture of a huge channel catfish arched above the logo. Both were faded these days, but still legible.
“I bet that catfish doesn’t give a good hot damn if I’m late,” Jodi muttered as she climbed the steep steps to the wooden porch. The store, like the house, was set up on six-foot stilts with an open-air space underneath. The Red River had flooded its banks lots of times in the past, but so far it hadn’t reached the floorboards of the store or the house. Jodi swiped a tear from her cheek when she thought of all the times her job at the end of the evening had been to line up the old ladder-back chairs that were now scattered all over the long porch. She took a moment to get them in order and to swallow the lump in her throat before she went inside.
The paint was chipped on every one of the chairs, showing that they had been painted red, orange, and even black before the final yellow coat had been applied. She stood back and looked at the last chair and then opened the door. The bell above it dinged and the store went surprisingly silent as everyone turned to look at her.
“Good mornin’,” she said. “Can I help someone find something?”
The silence went from so quiet that they could have heard a catfish swimming down the river to a steady buzz of conversation. Becky pointed to the cash register, and Jodi nodded. She would far rather ring up sales and take money than dip up minnows or help someone find just the right stink bait or box of worms. Becky was the one who had enjoyed fishing when they were kids and had loved to help Granny Lizzie dip the minnows from the long, narrow tank at the back of the store. Jodi would far rather hide under the shade of the big weeping willow trees and read a book.
The two women were swamped for an hour, and then the store cleared out enough that she could grab a root beer and a candy bar. She perched on a barstool behind the checkout counter and twisted the top off her soda pop. “You really meant it when you said we were busy,” she said.
Becky poured herself a cup of coffee and hopped up onto the counter. “Did you think I was just BS-in’ you? I don’t know how Granny Lizzie ran this place by herself.”
Before Jodi could respond, Lainie pushed open the door and said, “Hello, I’m here.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Becky said. “We thought you might run out on us like you did your wedding a week ago.”
“Do you even know how embarrassing that was for us?” Jodi barely gave Becky time to finish before she lit into Lainie. “I was even on time, which was doing good for me, and there me and Becky were at the front of the church. The “Wedding March” started, and your dad came down the aisle alone.”
“Hey, don’t give me any crap,” Lainie said. “I can always go right back outside and leave. I haven’t unloaded my bags at the house yet. I came straight here.”
Becky chuckled. “Where are you going to go? You quit your job. Aunt Melanie and Uncle John are mad at you, so get off your high horse and get ready to work.”
“I’m not on a high horse, and for your information, I was standing there waiting for Daddy to knock on the dressing room door when I figured out that I loved my wedding dress and all the presents more than I loved Eli, and…” She stopped and sucked in a lungful of air. “He was so controlling that I was having trouble breathing. He expected to tell me where to go, what to wear, and how to style my hair. I just couldn’t see waking up next to him every morning for the rest of my life and putting up with him ordering me around like he’d been doing.” Lainie crossed her arms over her chest. “Now what do you want me to do, and can I at least grab a doughnut and a bottle of chocolate milk before I start?”
Jodi shot a look toward Becky.
“Why are you looking at me?” Becky asked.
