“We’d borrow it from your brother?”
“No. In fact, if anything, he might borrow money from us.”
“I’m totally confused.”
“In three months, my inheritance is officially mine.”
“You’ve been talking about inheritance. You said you aren’t inheriting anything. I’m getting confused. Are you just confusing me to get my goat?”
“No,” Kristen explained, her face serious. “And I’m definitely not kidding, either. Will inherits most of my parents’ money.”
“Even if your parents die in three months, then, you don’t inherit anything other than the house and some jewelry, you said.”
“Yes.”
I was now confused. Didn’t somebody have to die for someone to get an inheritance? Kristen seemed to be intentionally confusing me. I really didn’t give a damn about her money, really.
I started to play another hand. If Kristen was going to explain herself, that she could do it. I started concentrating on my hand, which had a couple of Draw-Four cards in it. It looked like I was going to win another round.
“Jim, I turn eighteen in three months.”
“So?”
“I’ve already received my inheritance, but it’s in a trust fund.”
“But your parents are alive, and you’re not inheriting anything from them.”
“Yeah,” Kristen said seriously. She put her cards face down on the table. “You see, my grandfather on my father’s side was the one that made the family fortune. My father and he had a bit of a falling out years before I was born, and they didn’t speak to one another for years.”
“Sounds like Mom and my real dad,” I said.
“Well, my grandfather died right after I was born. He had a heart attack, I think, or was it a stroke? Anyway, in his will he had left his money to his wife, who had died a few years before he died, and any living blood relatives with the specific exception of my father. I was, and still am, the only living relative, so the money is now in a trust fund. I get a stipend from the interest of the balance, about two hundred thousand dollars a year, but my mother has it mostly reinvested back into the principal. American Express and my “allowance” come from that, and it’s nowhere near that amount. I get control of the fund when I’m eighteen, although there are some stipulations that prevent major withdrawals until I’m twenty-one, and there are some investments that won’t mature until I’m twenty-five.”
“You mean…”
“Yeah. The money is in a trust account, looked over by a bank selected by the executor of my grandfather’s estate. My dad had money from before my grandfather died. Up until recently, we only used my trust fund for collateral on the loan on our house, but Dad paid that off many years ago. In addition, I bought the apartment where Will lives in Cambridge and promised to pay for his first four years in college. My money’s just sitting in a bank earning lots of interest right now. As I said, the bank pays me an ‘allowance’ of sorts on an annual basis, but I have never really needed much of it. Since my parents already have plenty of money, my mother arranges for the American Express card and some ready cash for me and we redeposit what I don’t need. If I really needed money, I could actually get about sixteen thousand dollars a month. Of course, the interest rates may have changed, and the principal is now larger, but you get the picture.”
Something didn’t add up. “You said that you were the only relative, Kris,” I pointed out. “What about your brother Will?”
“Will’s not a blood relative,” Kristen explained. “My parents didn’t think that they could have children, so they adopted Will. Then, a year or so later, I was born.” Kristen shrugged. “I guess they were able to have children after all. As it stood, I was, and still am, the only living blood relative. I have an Aunt Honey, but she’s a friend of my parents, and not really a relative. I don’t even have any cousins. It’s just me.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Will has been more than a brother to me. He was also my best and only friend for the longest time. I know I told you that he was my first… the first guy I had sex with. We actually did it more than a few times. Last time was a couple of months ago when I visited him in Boston.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure what to say. I had, of course, known about Kristen’s first time with her brother, although I had never asked (nor really wanted to know) about the gory details. Hearing Kristen describe her relationship with her brother, especially the part where it seemed to be ongoing, however, made me feel a bit uneasy for some reason. Why this was, though, I couldn’t put a finger on it.
“Shit,” Kristen said, looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I hadn’t told you about all this,” Kristen said, “mostly because you didn’t ask.”
“I told you, the money isn’t that important.”
“But you’re jealous. There is really more that you need to know about me. Yeah, I’m rich. And I’ll take care of Will and my family, if necessary, and still have enough money to live very comfortably just on the interest alone. Will is special—very special to me. Please don’t be jealous. You don’t need to be.”
Jealousy? Was that what I was feeling? I was stunned.
“I’m not jealous,” I protested.
Kristen said, “You haven’t met Will. Maybe I’ll arrange a trip for the two of us to see him in Boston. We have a nice apartment there. I promise you that you’ll like him.”
I didn’t know how to answer this, especially the “we have an apartment” part. I didn’t say anything.
Kristen tried to find the right words. “Will isn’t you, Jim. He was, and still is, a very good friend to me. He is also my brother. I’ve talked to him quite a bit about you. I once thought of him as a lover, but we always knew that we wouldn’t be able to live together as husband and wife, and we both understand that.”
Kristen smiled at me. “Anyway, Will has this mystical way about him. I’ve told him about you and he really likes you, and has told me that he thinks that you’re a ‘keeper.’”
“He called me a ‘keeper?’” I repeated, now smiling. “That’s how Mom described you when I first brought you over for dinner.”
Kristen giggled. “Wow. Talk about coincidences! Anyway, you remember the day you made me a junkie?”
I lowered my eyes. Yes, I remembered that. Kristen didn’t talk about it that often, thank goodness. “Yeah,” I said, dejected.
Kristen knew I still harbored a lot of guilt over that. “I called Will collect that day,” she continued, “but I never got through to him. He was out, I guess. You don’t know how strange that was to me, Jim. It’s as if he always answers my calls on the first ring, as if he is expecting me to call that very second. This was one of the first times in my life that I turned to him and he wasn’t there. I didn’t really know who you were, or how you made me do the things I did. To tell you the truth, even now I don’t know what to make of your damned tickets. Anyway, I was thinking about moving out to Boston to be with him and to get away from you, but the reality was that you had made me addicted to you. There was no way for me to leave. The cravings were horrible! I was stuck here with you. Luckily, things have worked out since, and I’m still here.” Kristen gave me one of her killer smiles. “See! Happy ending!”
I looked at Kristen. She was smiling at me, having forgiven me a while ago. Now, of course, we were lovers.
Kristen picked up her cards, and then played a perfect sequence of Reverse, Skip, Draw-Two cards, then played a Draw-Four, called “Red” and played a red nine. Her hand was empty, and I looked at my hand… the two Draw Fours were one hundred points right there, and I had six more cards from the draw pile on top of that.