At First Hate (Coastal Chronicles)

“As an attorney, I must advise against that.”

“Well, you’re not my attorney,” I said, getting up into his face. He still towered over me, as he always had, but I had pent-up fury on my side. “So, I don’t give a fuck what you advise.”

I pushed his chest. It didn’t move him an inch, of course. It only moved me backward, but I’d done what I wanted, and that was all that mattered. I left him standing there and jumped into Nancy. I tossed the packet of paperwork into the passenger side.

“You’re making a mistake,” he called from the other side of the street.

I flipped him off as I maneuvered out of the spot and out onto the Savannah streets. I didn’t even look back. My body was vibrating with anger at the entire interaction. That I’d had to see Derek today of all days when I buried my Gran was bad enough. But that he was actually representing my mom and aunt was absurd. He knew all the shit I’d gone through with my mom through the years. Not that it made a difference in the long run. I didn’t know why I’d expected it to. Derek would always do what was best for Derek. He wanted partner. Why not throw me under the bus to get it?

Despite never seeing my aunt, I knew where she lived. She’d been in the same house in town with my alcoholic uncle since I’d been a kid. It was a run-down one-story on the edges of the rough part of town. It looked even more like a dump than I remembered. The fence was destroyed in one section, the yard was overrun with weeds, and the entire house looked like one good hurricane wind off the Atlantic would knock the whole thing over.

Uncle Bobby sat on the porch, shirtless, with a litter of Budweisers surrounding him. He nodded his head at me as I parked in the driveway and stomped up the steps. “Hey there. Now, that’s a face I haven’t seen in a while.”

Bobby hadn’t always been like this. He and Aunt Ruth had four kids, and he’d been a doting dad until the youngest left for college. I’d joked once that being alone with Aunt Ruth had sent him to the bottle. Gran had called me unkind, but I didn’t think that I was wrong.

“Hey, Bobby. My mom here?” I asked, my Southern accent—which I’d thought I’d gotten rid of—coming out in full force.

He glanced at the door and back. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. They’ve been yelling since they got back.”

“That why you’re outside?”

He held up a beer. “Smarter than being in there.”

I nodded and then pulled open the screen to knock on the door. The shouting ceased for a blessed minute before Aunt Ruth jerked the door open. She was a portly woman with thinning blonde hair and a mean sneer on her lips.

“Oh, Miss High and Mighty dares to bless us with her presence,” Aunt Ruth said with an eye roll.

“I want to speak to my mom,” I said, ignoring her jab at my education.

“Hannah, one of your brats is here.”

I clenched my jaw. How the hell these two women had been raised by my Gran was beyond me. How was it even possible that they’d come from the same house that I’d grown up in? Gran had told me that they made their choices, just like I made mine, but it didn’t seem like a sufficient enough reason.

“Marley Sue,” my mom said, stepping into the light.

She’d always been such a contrast to her sister with beautiful, long, flowing brown hair with just a hint of curl—where I’d gotten mine. Even in her late forties, it was obvious how she’d always gotten men interested in her with her wide brown eyes, perfectly painted lush lips, and lithe figure. Gran had said that I looked like her when I cared about my appearance. I’d scoffed and vowed to only care about where my brain could get me and not my body. It hadn’t always worked.

“What the fuck is this, Mom?”

I thrust the paperwork out at her. She took it in her hand, tapping her fresh French manicure against the papers. Then, she arched an eyebrow. “You’re the smart one. Shouldn’t you know?”

“How dare you challenge Gran’s will!”

My mom straightened at my words. “Oh, I dare. I was in that will until a few short months ago. Your precious Gran left me and Ruth everything. Clearly, you had something to do with it to get her to hand over everything to you and your brother and leave us with nothing. She wasn’t in her right mind in the end anyway.”

I glared at her. “I didn’t do anything. You had that enormous fight with Gran. It’s not my fault that she finally saw you as the leech you always were and cut you out.”