The Inheritance

The Inheritance

by Rob Rhoades

Madison woke up that morning and proceeded to start her day like every other day. She got up, started the coffee, got dressed, made breakfast, and then would sit and watch the news while eating her breakfast. She was unemployed currently due to Covid-19 and its impact on the economy. She had checked for jobs, but there were none to be had or at least ones she would consider. The highlight of her day was waiting for the postal worker to drop off her mail. She had been expecting her much needed unemployment check, which had yet to arrive. Today's mail brought something unexpected. There was a large brown envelope. She could not recall ever receiving an envelope like that unless it was from the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes promising you could be a winner.

Madison opened the envelope and pulled out its contents. There was news of her Aunt Charlotte passing away. She had not thought about Aunt Charlotte in a long time. Most of Madison's relatives had passed away, and from what her mom told her, Aunt Charlotte was a recluse and a bit of an odd duck who lived several states away. It was easy to see why she had forgotten her. She recalled one old memory of her Aunt when Maddison had been young and remembered her Aunt making her laugh so hard she almost peed. This hit Madison like a punch in the gut as now she was very aware that she was the last of her family. She started to read through the legal documents that had been mailed to her.

The documents from her Aunt Charlotte's estate noted that Madison was the last known relative and would inherit her belongings and assets. From what she could see, her aunt did not own any property but did have around $20,000 in cash and about $2500 in Savings. She was to appear in a month at the law office that was overseeing her aunt's estate. Twenty thousand dollars was a lot, and she needed it more than ever right now, being out of work. She started to think about all the things she could buy with that money. She could get a new car to replace her old '98 Toyota Camry that, while it was a solid car, showed its age and needed to go to the shop a lot more than in the past. Her house also needed several repairs, which could go a long way in helping fix. The unemployment money had yet to arrive and would not be much anyway.

Madison booted up her old computer. It seemed to take forever to come online and open up to her Desktop. She then connected to her AOL account, and she laughed internally that she was probably one of the last people on Earth still using AOL. She connected to a trip comparison website and proceeded to book a flight and hotel for Montana. She had not flown much and had never been out of state. Montana seemed like a foreign country in comparison to her local world. She wondered if her old luggage would be ok to use but figured that she did not have much money to afford anything new until she got her inheritance. She marked on her calendar when she would be flying out and wrote a checklist of what she would bring.

A month passed before she knew it, and the day arrived for her flight. She found a cheap shuttle that would bring her to the airport, a more cost effective option than airport parking fees. She got up early and, after breakfast, grabbed her packed bag and headed out. She was not much for getting out, and this seemed like an adventure to her. After checking in and going through the formalities of security, she was soon boarding her plane and setting out for the great beyond.

When Madison departed the plane, she saw the big sign, "Welcome to Butte, Montana - The Richest Hill on Earth." She thought that was a cute motto and grabbed her bag and found a shuttle to her hotel. Her hotel was small and quaint but affordable and within walking distance of the law firm she was to visit the next day. The hotel did not serve food but did have a vending machine. She contemplated having something from there but then thought she would have some money soon, so she decided to treat herself. She walked down the street to a small Italian restaurant she found and ordered one of her favorite dishes, linguini with clams. She decided to splurge and bought a small bottle of wine. She toasted herself to the bounty she was about to receive and thought of her good fortune.

As always, she arrived early for her appointment at the Law Offices of Major, Schwarzer, and Nida. The young receptionist asked her to wait in the lobby and offered her some coffee. She waited patiently and read an old Readers Digest, laughing at some of the jokes and buying time until they called her into one of the lawyer's offices. Scott introduced himself and explained he was handling the estate for Charlotte. He said they found her peacefully passed away in her apartment. She did not seem to have much value except her Savings account and what they found in her mattress—almost twenty thousand dollars. For whatever reason, her Aunt Charlotte did not seem to trust putting that money in the bank. He brought out some paperwork to sign and then proceeded to hand over the money in a bag they provided. He noted there was one other thing to give her, and it was a folder that he said contained a little black book. Maintaining privacy, they had left it for Madison to review and said they assumed it was an address book.

Charlotte waited until she returned to her hotel and locked the door before checking the bag. Looking through it, she assumed all the money was there and decided to investigate the little black book. Although the book was old, she could see it was of high quality and weathered the years very well. She started thumbing through it and found it was a leger with several names and addresses. She soon figured out that the listings were people her Aunt had worked for. As she examined it more closely, she saw different sums of money listed beside each name. Her mother had told her years ago that Charlotte had done many odd jobs to get through life. A personal assistant, driver, caregiver, gardener, or whatever else people needed. Most of her work helped older people who could not easily accomplish the tasks that younger people took for granted.

Madison could not figure out why there were different sums of money listed for each family. These amounts were large sums that did not seem to account for the work she had done and had different amounts that did not figure to be normal earnings. Not unless they were paying her Aunt a lot of money for her odd jobs. She started reading through the black book more intensely and checking all the detailed notes. It dawned on her that the money listed had most likely been stolen. There was no way a family was paying Charlotte thousands of dollars for her work performed. She was now pretty sure that her Aunt was a thief and had stolen the money from these families over the several years she had worked for them. Madison looked over at the bag of money on her bed and realized this was not the gold mine she had anticipated. She was an honest woman, and the thought of stolen money did not appease her at all. She felt sick to her stomach now and started contemplating what she was going to do.

After a restless night, Madison got out of bed. As much as she needed the money right now, she knew it would not be right to keep it. She had the black book with all the families' names and addresses that her Aunt Charlotte had stolen. She would use the money from her Aunt's savings to pay for some extra days to stay at the hotel. The twenty thousand dollars she had in her bag did not account for all the money noted in her Aunt's registry but must be what she had left from the embezzled money. Madison got out a scratch piece of paper and noted how much her Aunt had stolen from each family. She would use that to figure out a percentage of how much each family should get from the money left in the bag. She would go out to each family, explain what had happened and give them their portion of the money she had inherited.

Madison waited for the taxi she had called and then got in when it arrived. She gave the driver the address of the first family on her list. Again, she thought about how much this money would help her, but she knew in the end, giving the money back was the right thing to do. She felt good about her decision and knew that she would be back at home and could think of this little adventure as an exciting chapter in her life when this was over.