Stuck With the Grumpy Single Dad

2. Chapter One Matt

Chapter One: Matt

[ Present Day]

Never sand against the wood grain. It’s one of the cardinal rules of carpentry, and a pretty good rule for life in general, too. If you go against the grain, you’ll create imperfections in the wood and ruin the whole project. Similarly, in life, if you deviate from the status quo, you risk being ostracized.

I’ve been a carpenter for over fifteen years, which means that these rules are second nature to me now. In terms of how I live my life, however, I’m not much of a rule follower. I never went to college. Never moved to the big city to follow big dreams. Never really had big dreams in the first place.

I guess I did the whole married-with-kids thing for a while, but that didn’t last long.

Lost in thought, I gently sand down the oak doors of the cabinetry I’ve been working on for the past week or so. It’s for a client down in Bar Harbor. Like a lot of my customers, they’re rich folks from out of state—the type of people who have their interior designer reach out to me instead of doing it themselves. Not that I really mind. Maine’s tourism industry keeps me employed, thanks to all those fancy people who are constantly remodeling their vacation homes.

Then again, things are still pretty tight around here. It was a rough winter. I went two months without a project, and I’m still scrambling to recover from it now in July.

Outside my workshop, which is really just a dirty old barn with a sagging roof that I’ll eventually get around to fixing, I hear the girls screaming and laughing in the yard. The fact that they’re turning thirteen in October makes me feel a little dizzy. Time flies.

I finish up with the sanding and step back to admire my handiwork. The cabinets are ready to be stained, but my stomach is grumbling for lunch. Stepping out of the barn, I wipe the ever-present sawdust off my hands with a rag.

The girls are fooling around on the tire swing suspended from the massive maple tree in the front yard. Mia’s hanging through the middle of the tire, arms and legs outstretched like Superman. Ava is standing atop the tire, clinging onto the rope with one hand and brandishing a stick with the other.

“Girls, what do you want for lunch?”

In unison, the twins whip around, Ava nearly losing her balance in the process, and grin at me.

“Pickles!” shouts Mia at the same time Ava yells, “Pancakes!”

Then, as synchronized as ever, they gasp and say, “Pickles on pancakes!”

I wrinkle my nose at them. Mia squirms out of the tire and flops onto the grass with a quiet oof . Ava jumps down beside her, nearly smacking her sister in the face with the stick in the process. I give her a stern look, and open my mouth to tell her to be careful, but then my phone starts ringing in my pocket.

“Hold that thought,” I tell the girls, grabbing my phone and heading up the lawn toward the house. I can’t afford to miss a call from a current or potential client.

The second I walk away, the girls set off into the nearby woods, shouting something about some boys from school or something.

I’m pretty sure the call is coming from a Massachusetts area code, but I don’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon,” answers a masculine voice in a businesslike tone. “I’m calling for a… Mr. Morgan?”

I push open the screen door and gently kick the twins’ shoes out of the way as I head toward the kitchen. No matter how many times I tell them not to, they leave their little hoard of colorful flip-flops all over the entryway.

“That would be me,” I answer.

“You’re Matthew Callum Morgan of Greenville, Maine?”

I pause for a moment. “Yeah… can I ask who’s calling?”

“Apologies, sir. This is Attorney Ted McHugh calling from the Law Offices of McHugh and Maynard in Boston.”

“Am I in some kind of trouble?”

A light chuckle. “No, sir. Not at all. I apologize for the cold call. We’ve never really dealt with a situation like this before, so I’m not quite sure how to begin, you see.”

I lean against the kitchen counter, idly listening to the distant sounds of the girls screeching like banshees out in the woods. “What’s going on?”

“Mr. Morgan, are you familiar with a man named Roger James Beaufort?”

“Not at all. No.”

“What about a Patricia Morgan, maiden name Beaufort? ”

“Um, no. Sorry.”

“I see. How about Joseph and Ruth Morgan?”

My brow furrows in confusion. Who is this guy and what does he want?

“Those are my grandparents,” I tell him. “On my dad’s side.”

“Okay, great. Well, to clarify, I believe Patricia Morgan is your great-grandmother.”

“Oh.”

I don’t really know what else to say. As far as my father’s side of the family tree goes, I know almost nothing about them. My dad died when I was in high school, and he never really talked about them. All I know is that he had a brother, Bill, who passed away when they were kids in a boat accident—or something like that. I never actually met my paternal grandparents, either, since they died when I was in kindergarten.

It’s really my mom’s side of the family that I’m closest to, even if there aren’t many of them left. She died two years after my wife passed, leaving me with a couple of aunts and some cousins scattered throughout the forests of inland Maine.

Basically, I’ve lost a lot of people. Not enough to be used to it by now, but I definitely have grief down to an organized science.

“Well, Mr. Morgan—”

“Call me Matt, please.”

“Sure, Matt. Well, to get to the point, Roger James Beaufort was Patricia Morgan’s elder brother. Your great-great-uncle. He passed away last summer.”

For some reason, I almost laugh. It’s not funny at all, but the news of yet another deceased family member kind of makes me feel a little deranged. Did someone curse our bloodline or something?

“Okay,” I respond. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Mr. Morgan—Matt, I mean—we’ve spent the past year trying to locate the beneficiary of Mr. Beaufort’s estate. He was a rather old-fashioned sort of man, and dictated that his entire estate be passed on to the eldest surviving male relative of the Beaufort family.”

“Okay…”

“Mr. Beaufort never had children, you see. Patricia was his only sibling, so we spent some time tracing her descendants. She had two children—your grandfather Joseph and great-aunt Susan. Now, Susan had quite a few kids—five to be exact—but all of them were daughters, and none have produced any sons. So, we moved down a generation to your father and your uncle, who are, of course, deceased.”

“Right.”

“My condolences, by the way.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“So, anyway, Matt, what I mean to say is that I’m calling to inform you that you are the eldest surviving male of the Beaufort family lineage and, therefore, you stand to inherit the entirety of Mr. Roger Beaufort’s estate.”

I stare into space for a long moment. All other sounds seem to fade away—the incessant mourning dove nesting on the telephone pole, the neighbor down the road mowing their lawn, the girls giggling somewhere beyond the open windows. All of it goes quiet.

“Sir…?” the attorney prompts on the other end of the line. “Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m just a little confused. How can I inherit something from a man I didn’t even know existed?”

“Well, it’s perfectly legal. It’s in his notarized will. In fact, I was the one who drew up the document for him about a decade ago. He lived a long life, Mr. Beaufort. Ninety- two years. And he always made it clear that this is exactly what he wanted to happen when he eventually passed away.”

“Okay. Right. Sure.”

“I understand that it’s a little strange—”

“What do you mean by ‘estate’? Did he have a house or something? Where did he even live?”

“Yes, sir. The estate includes a house. If you can call it that.”

What does that even mean? It would be just my luck to inherit a crumbling old shack that would cost me even more money to deal with than it’s worth.

“A house? Where?”

“Well, Matt… Mr. Roger Beaufort owned a five-acre cliffside estate in a town called Mermaid Shores, located right on the southern edge of Cape Cod. It’s a seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom manor with a detached two-bedroom, two-bathroom guest house valued at about six-point-three million dollars. The estate also includes a 1992 Saab convertible, a 1981 Cape Dory yacht, all other items and personal effects on the property, and the contents of his accounts at TD Bank, which totals approximately one-point-two million dollars and some change.”

On shaky legs, I stumble toward a kitchen chair and slowly lower myself into it. I blink once, twice, three times, as if I’m trying to wake myself from a dream.

Because this has to be a dream, right? Stuff like this doesn’t actually happen. People don’t inherit millions of dollars in assets out of the blue. People don’t have their lives changed so dramatically like this.

McHugh isn’t even done yet, though.

“Mr. Beaufort also had a solid stock portfolio, as well as investments in a lucrative mutual fund, so those assets, we’ve approximated at about two billion dollars. There’s also a safety deposit box with some valuable family heirlooms, such as jewelry and a few gold pieces, valued at approximately sixty thousand dollars combined.”

Family heirlooms ? Two billion dollars?

No, this has to be a mistake. My dad was a blue-collar guy whose idea of luxury was driving down to Bangor and getting dinner at the Olive Garden. He wore a strict uniform of plain blue jeans, old t-shirts from the thrift store, and muddy work boots every day. His and my mom’s wedding bands were sterling silver rings from Walmart. He’s not the sort of guy who has wealthy relatives with huge estates and jeweled heirlooms to pass down. If he was, he would’ve said something.

Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have. My dad wasn’t exactly known to be a chatty guy. He hardly ever spoke at all unless he was asking my mom to get him another beer or telling me that I was too skinny for a growing boy. Now that I think about it, he never talked about his family. Mom was the one who told me about what happened to his brother.

But if my dad knew that we had rich folks in the family tree, why did he let us struggle for my entire childhood? He worked long days doing hard labor and my mom wore herself down working crazy hours as a medical assistant at the local hospital. When he died, our financial situation got even more difficult.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know how to feel.

None of this is making any sense to me.

The attorney is still talking, but I’m no longer paying attention.

“Is this a prank?” I ask.

He pauses. “Pardon?”

“Is this some kind of joke or—or a scam? ”

“Not at all, Matt. I can assure that this is all legitimate, and I would be more than happy to connect with your own attorney to confirm everything.”

I almost scoff. As if I could afford my own lawyer. I don’t even think there’s anyone practicing law within fifty miles of this tiny town.

“I’d like to take a look at the documents myself, actually,” I reply.

“Not a problem! No problem at all, really. I understand how all this can come as quite a shock. I can only imagine how overwhelmed you might be feeling, but you can rest assured that I am here to help you. Mr. Beaufort was a good man and it’s an honor to be handling the transfer of his estate. I can only apologize that it took us so long to find you.”

“No, I should be apologizing for that. I’m, uh… well, I’m a very private person.”

“I understand, Matt. How about you give me your email and I’ll send over a scanned copy of your great-great-uncle’s last will and testament? I’ll also include a copy of my Bar certification, so you can have some comforting proof that I’m a reputable guy. I know it’s not exactly easy to trust some random attorney calling from Boston.”

At that, I huff out a laugh. “Yeah, not really. Thanks, though. I’m still not sure I believe this is real, so I might need some time to think before I sign any paperwork or whatever it is you need me to do next.”

“That’s absolutely fine.”

I give the lawyer my email address, which I hardly ever use, and then end the call.

For several minutes, all I can do is stare at the table in front of me. It’s scattered with yesterday’s mail and the leftover scraps of construction paper from a craft project the twins were doing yesterday.

There’s a letter from the bank informing me that the mortgage is past due. A letter from the phone company warning me that if I don’t pay my balance within ten business days, they’ll disconnect the line. Then there are all the other bills—one from the credit card I use for my carpentry business, another from the gas company, and one from a loan I had to take out right after my wife died. Twelve years later, and I’m still paying that one off.

If what McHugh is telling me is true, I now have more than enough money to pay all those bills off completely, once and for all. I’d have enough money to buy my own tropical island and retire forever, by the sounds of it. Not that I really want to do that; I don’t know what I’d do with myself.

There’s something else, too. He mentioned a house in Cape Cod. A manor , to be specific. When he told me the name of the town, something inside me sparked like a live wire.

Mermaid Shores.

I know exactly where that is. I’ve been writing the name of that town on envelopes since I was fifteen years old.