Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82480 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 412(@200wpm)___ 330(@250wpm)___ 275(@300wpm)
I cooked and ate my food, along with my cup of orange juice.
Once I had everything together and couldn’t put it off any longer, I pulled on my pants, which rested over a rack by the front door, then put on my dress shoes. I made sure to lock up on the way out.
There was a car waiting for me in front of my San Diego apartment building. “Hello, Bradley,” I said to the driver after I climbed into the back seat. “Good morning, Mom.” She was seated beside me. She had an apartment in the same building, and we worked together too. She was slightly overprotective, only without the slightly part.
“Good morning, Mr. Copeland,” Bradley replied. “Milo,” he amended, likely seeing the scowl on my face. I didn’t like to be called Mr. Copeland, though people had been saying it all my life.
“He’s just being professional, Milo,” Mom said.
“Yes, but I don’t like it. Isn’t it also professional to call people what they want to be called?”
She sighed. I made her do that a lot. “How was your morning?”
“Noisy,” I replied, thinking about all the fuck mes I’d heard before hitting Mute.
Mom frowned but didn’t ask. She’d learned there were times she shouldn’t ask me what I meant because I had a habit of always being honest.
It took forty-five minutes to get to Mom’s financial firm, where I worked as an accountant. She’d built her business from the ground up with her own sweat and hard work. As overbearing as she could sometimes be, there was no one in the world I respected more than my mom.
She didn’t need anyone.
She didn’t let anyone take advantage of her.
When Dad left me, she stayed.
We talked work the whole way; that was what we almost always discussed on our journey to the office. Neither of us had much of a social life—Mom because she often scared people and didn’t much like them, me because I didn’t always know how to relate to them and they didn’t know how to accept me.
We took the elevator up. I was comfortable with the one in this building because I knew it was checked regularly. “You should come over for dinner tonight,” Mom said. She didn’t ask, but it wasn’t as if I had anything to do anyway.
“I can do that.”
Once we exited, we went our separate ways, each to our own office.
The morning was spent going about the same routine as I’d had since I started working there. I didn’t love numbers, but I was good at them, and I didn’t really know what I loved. Maybe there was nothing. Most of the time I was okay with that, but others it upset me in ways I couldn’t really put my finger on. Maybe sort of like wanting to have sex but being picky who I had it with and how we did it. Sometimes I was my own worst enemy.
It was noon, thirty minutes before my lunch hour, when my assistant called from the front. “Milo, you have a call from a lawyer in Portland on line one.”
I frowned, wondering who it could be. “Can you put them through?”
“Of course.”
A few seconds later, a man’s voice was on the line. “Hello, is this Milo Copeland?”
“Yes, may I ask what this is in regard to?”
“My name is Chester Harrington. I’m based in Portland, Maine. Your grandmother hired me to represent her estate.”
My stomach twisted, but then my brain kicked in and took control. This had to be wrong. “This must be a mistake. My grandparents are both dead. They passed in a car accident before I was born.”
“Your mother is Beverly Copeland from Little Beach Island in—”
“Maine,” I finished for him, trying to mentally sort through what was going on.
“Wilma Allen was Beverly’s biological mother. From what I understand, they didn’t have a relationship.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing would come out. My thoughts were spinning, my chest too tight. “I don’t…I don’t understand,” I finally managed to say. Mom was adopted, and she’d never told me?
“I don’t know the whys behind their relationship, or lack thereof. And I’m sorry. I hate to be the one to tell you that your biological grandmother passed. It’s not much, but she left her bookstore to you—that and the apartment upstairs, the whole building, actually—but she rents the store next door to a gentleman, Gideon Barlow. He runs a tattoo parlor out of the space and—”
“I own a tattoo parlor?” I didn’t even have tattoos. Why would someone choose to permanently carve something into their skin?
He chuckled. “Well, no. You own the building, and the space is rented to Mr. Barlow. She asked in her will that you continue to allow him the space. And there’s the issue of the apartment to figure out, but it would be easier if we could do this in person. I’m not sure what you want to do with the properties, if you’ll want to keep them or—”