Inheriting The Girl Next Door

Walter Caruthers moved in next door two days after I was born. He was like a second father to me, so when my parents died in a car crash, he kind of raised me as if I was one of his own. That was why his **** really shocked me to my core. For the first time in twenty-five years I was alone in the world. I was kind of in a bubble, the world went on around me but I didn’t feel a part of it at all.

That was why as I walked in front of his driveway gate, I had noticed that the gate opened and a pick-up truck was pulling out going faster than it should have, almost clipping me. I just managed to throw myself to the left when the truck turned around and shot down the street.

I picked myself up and brushed dirt off my jacket then raised my fist to the back end of the truck and swore that when we met again I would tell the driver off. I started to go to my minimum wage hell, letting what just happened seethe inside for the whole day.

After Five PM I came back home and as I was about to walk in front of the gate, I hesitated and counted to twenty in my head. As nineteen turned to twenty, I started to walk across making it without incident. That was when I noticed the front drapes were pulled tight. The only sign of inhabitation was a single overhead light in a window on the second floor with the draped partially opened.

I had a good mind to go to the front door and let the fucking driver have a piece of my mind over this morning near accident, but my stomach growled and i continued home to get something to eat. Much like always I checked the mailbox before unlocking the front door.

Today I found an envelope from a lawyer’s office, addressed to me. I carried it to the front door, unlocked it and went in, tossing it onto the little table at the bottom of the stairs.

I never thought of it again until I was ready to go upstairs to bed, a little after the eleven o’clock newscast. Passing the table the envelope caught my eye. For some reason something deep down told me to open it. I grabbed it and slit the flap with a fingernail and found a single piece of paper. Scanning it, I cried out, “NO FUCKING WAY!”

I reread it twice, still not thinking that what it said was for real. It claimed that I was to be in the offices of McLearn , Stills and Pevee at ten o’clock for a reading of a will belonging to one Walter Caruthers, in which I had been named. Suddenly I wasn’t tired and needed a stiff belt to calm my nerves.

I mean I knew Walter but why would he put me in his will. And more importantly what did he leave me?