Read Online The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb - Free Book Online

Madlyn and asked about it, saying that the woman in the photo looked enough like her to be her daughter. As soon as Madlyn saw it, she knew.”
    “But why didn’t she just get on a plane? Or call me? If only she had . . .”
    “She told me she hired a private investigator to do some nosing around first,” he said. “She found out your father was in a nursing home and was concerned about the effect her showing up out of the blue would have on you. She wasn’t quite sure how to handle such a delicate situation and decided a letter was the best approach.”
    I sighed and slumped a little lower in my chair. “I know,” he said, in sympathy.
    “I wish she had lived long enough to mail it.”
    I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands, afraid tears would begin. As if to pull me back from the precipice of grief that I was teetering on, William cleared his throat andsaid, “We should really talk about the will, Hallie. Are you ready to do that?”
    “Of course,” I told him. “I don’t have any idea what she might have left to me, but it will be nice to have some token of who she was.”
    He smiled sadly, picked up a sheet of paper that had been sitting on his desk, face down, this whole time—the will, I assumed—and said, “I’ll just read this aloud.”
    I braced myself for what I was about to hear.
    “ ‘I, Madlyn Crane, being of sound mind and body, do hereby leave all my worldly goods to my daughter, Halcyon Crane, also known as Hallie James.’ “
    I gasped.
    “ ‘I do have one stipulation, however. The house is not to be sold. Hallie, you are a fourth-generation islander. You were born in that house. Your great-grandfather built it and he would want it to stay in the family as much as I do. Come and go as you wish, use my money to maintain it, but do not sell it. Raise your family here as I intended to raise mine.’ “
    He stopped. “There’s a bit more, but it’s just legal stuff. We changed her will almost immediately after she found out you were alive. She had planned to divide her estate to endow several arts foundations, but the fact of your existence changed her mind about that. Madlyn was a very family-oriented woman.”
    I was silent for a moment. “I can’t believe she left everything to me.”
    “Of course you’re shocked. This is so unexpected. You have just inherited a fortune from a woman you didn’t even know.”
    “What do you mean, a fortune?”
    “Madlyn was a wealthy woman,” he said. “Her death has quite literally changed your life.”
    He handed me a stack of bank statements, investment reports, and other financial documents I didn’t recognize. I looked through them, dumbly, not really knowing what I was seeing. But I do know one thing: There were a lot of zeroes. Madlyn Crane was worth millions. And now, unbelievably, so was I.
    My mind was spinning. It raced from the goodbye letter I’d send to my boss, to finally being able to pay off all my creditors, to taking that trip back to Europe I’d always dreamed of. I had never in my life been financially secure, and now, in an instant, I was
wealthy
. After a moment, though, I felt ashamed. “I wish I could trade all that money for the childhood I was supposed to have had here.”
    William’s eyes met mine. He gave me a slight smile and shrugged.
    “What do I do now?” I asked him.
    “You have a house and a couple of dogs waiting for you.”
    The enormity of that statement had not yet hit me. A house? Dogs? It didn’t feel real. But then again, nothing had, from the moment I read Madlyn’s letter.
    “I’ve got the keys right here,” he continued. “I thought you’d probably want to head out there after you heard they were yours.” He stood up and reached for a brown leather jacket hanging on the coat rack in the corner. “I’ll take you, if you’d like.”
    “Really? Do you have the time? I mean, what about your other clients?”
    He looked around the empty room. “Everyone here can just wait