Read Online The Inheritance (Volume Two) by Zelda Reed - Free Book Online Page A

to pick through his things, sorting out what I want to keep (nothing) and what can be given to charity (everything).
    I find a bench away from the clusters of families, holding hands as they wander around aimlessly, chins craned towards the metallic skyline, soaking in the height of the buildings.
    My mother picks up on the second ring. “Where are you?” she says. The television’s on in the background, looped laughter heightening after a zinger.
    “I’ve gotta stay for a few more days. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”
    “Jesus,” the back door opens and slams shut. “I thought maybe this was all some joke and Gina called you out there to kill you.”
    It feels good to let out a laugh, my head tipping back, my hair brushing against the bench. On the other end of the line a chair scrapes against concrete and I can see my mother now, propping her leg on her knee, sliding her cigarettes from beneath her magazines on the backyard table, shoving one in the corner of her mouth as she lights up and inhales.
    “Dad left you some money,” I say.
    She clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “You can have it.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Well, I don’t want it either. It’s guilt money, that’s all it is. A couple thousand to make us feel validated, loved, so we don’t run off and write a tell-all. But that’s easy. Like throwing crumbs to park pigeons. Apologizing and admitting you were wrong? That’s the only thing I’d ever accept from your father.”
    My father’s urn rattles in my purse. “It’s a little too late for that.”
    My mother laughs. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t holding my breath.”
    A comfortable silence stretches between the pair of us, the soft summer wind brushing against my phone, the sound of Baltimore sirens blaring in my ear. My mother’s flipping through the magazines in front of her. Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Lawns & Gardens, magazines made for creative, older women.
    “Gardenia’s,” she says, testing the word on her tongue.
    “What about them?”
    “You know,” she says, nothing more.
    “When Gina called did she mention what Dad died from?”
    “I told you, it was a cold or something.”
    “Yes but did she tell you that or was that something you made up?”
    I know my mother. I know her elbows are on the glass table and she’s pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes close as she realizes: “I don’t think I was paying much attention after she told me Julian was dead.”
    A small smile tugs at my lips. “So he could’ve died of something else. Something that wasn’t a cold or cancer?”
    “Correct,” she says. Then, “You’ll find out won’t you?” She says it in a bored tone, thumb sliding over her wet tongue, flipping the magazine from one page to the next. I don’t care if you do, but please don’t forget.
    “Of course,” I say.
    “Good.”
    My mother hangs up. No good-bye, no, I love you, though I know she does. It’s just her way. When the conversation is over, there’s nothing more to say.
    I lay the newspapers on my lap and flip through The City Paper. It’s a mess of sex shops, apartment, alternative boutiques, tattoo parlors, and restaurant advertisements, squeezed between nuggets of articles pertaining to underground bands, perverse literature, and local artists craving the mainstream. It’s the sort of paper my mother loves and my father would never read, the artwork crude and unattractive. Rejecting conformity. The sort of magazine I hoarded in college, desperate to transform into the opposite of my father’s approval.
    I head straight to the Finance section of The Chicago Times, my eyes skirting past stocks and chunks of text, to the page dedicated to Neal’s dinner.
    The largest photo is of him, standing on the stage, pointedly gazing at Anthony Serafin as he’s dragged out of the room. The crowd in the foreground stares, open mouthed, Ashleigh and I blurry specks in the background. So, there was another journalist in