“Cheers,” I muttered.
“Salut.”
I finished what was in my glass and poured another.
Stella and I talked for another twenty minutes about absolutely nothing. By then I had enough liquor in my system that all I could picture when I closed my eyes was how her naked body would look under mine.
“I better call it a night. It was good to hear your voice, darlin’.” I waited for her to respond but only heard the chimes of the call ending. It was the way she always ended our phone calls. I’d asked her why once.
“I don’t say goodbye unless it’s forever,” she’d told me.
It hadn’t occurred to me until now that when I left the wedding, those were the words she used.
6
Buck
My father’s funeral was as much of a blur as the visitation had eventually become, with too many people I didn’t know paying their respects to a man I hadn’t respected since I was a child.
Now, I felt myself counting the minutes until the meeting with the attorney handling my father’s estate would be over. As soon as it was, I planned to be on the first flight I could catch out of Colorado. Whether I could pick up another mission right away or not, my plan was to return to DC to see Stella.
While the town of Crested Butte was home to a few law firms, the Wheaton family attorney was in Gunnison—the county seat. The day after the funeral, that’s where my siblings and I were headed.
“Hey, Buck,” said a guy dressed in a suit and tie as he reached out to shake my hand when we pulled up and piled out of the two vehicles we’d driven over.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
Cord jabbed me with his elbow. “You don’t recognize Six-pack Langley?”
I looked the guy up and down. Ol’ Six-pack hadn’t gotten his nickname from having washboard abs. It was from the six-pack he could down faster than one of us could finish a single beer. “You a lawyer now?”
“That’s right. Took over the practice from my dad a few years ago.” He looked over at Cord. “I go by Richard now.”
I caught the glint in my brother’s eye right before Porter jabbed him like Cord had me. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, motioning for us to go inside.
“As you know,” began Six-pack after the rest of us were seated. “Your father’s will is complicated. I’ll get through it the best I can and ask that you hold your questions until I’ve finished reading it in its entirety.”
That he’d used the word “complicated” seemed to come as no surprise to anyone but me. What the hell did that mean?
Six-pack cleared his throat and adjusted the microphone that sat on his desk.
“You recording this?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that necessary?”
“It’s our policy, yes.”
I motioned for him to go ahead. Six-pack cleared his throat a second time, stated his name along with the names of my brothers, sister, and me.
“We’re here today for the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Roscoe Buchtold Wheaton, Senior.”
I looked at the document the man held in his hands. It was damn thick for the will of a man who didn’t own much outside of a ranch that had been handed down through his family for several generations.
I zoned out most of what he said until I realized all eyes in the room were on me.
“Here’s where it gets complicated,” said Six-pack. He continued reading a bunch of legal jargon that didn’t mean anything to me. He stopped, turned a page, and cleared his throat again.