LITMIR.BIZ

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I take it you’ve heard of us?”

      Home-Max was the chain of large warehouselike stores that sold all manner of building materials, lumber, home-improvement and remodeling supplies, large and small appliances, everything pertaining to lighting, lamps and wiring, as well as garden, patio, barbecue and landscaping equipment and machinery. The company had been in the news lately for sweeping the Western states with openings of new stores and doing newsworthy damage to their competitors.

      “Of course I’ve heard of Home-Max, but, no, I didn’t know you—personally—are Home-Max.”

      “Well, my family is,” he clarified. “My sister, Marti, my brother, Ry, Gram and I own them all.”

      “Theresa didn’t tell me that,” Neily said as the information sank in.

      “It isn’t as if she’s involved, and half the time she forgets that it is Home-Max now. She knew it as G and H Hardware—that was how it started, with my grandfather’s one-corner hardware store.”

      “Your grandfather—Theresa’s husband,” Neily said to clarify.

      “Right. He had the hardware store when they met. Just a small place he ran by himself. Gram had a little money and after they were married she put it into the store to expand it—that’s when it became G and H: G for Grayson, H for Hobbs, Gram’s maiden name, since Hobbs money provided for the expansion. When my grandfather died, the store went to my father—their only child. Things boomed with him in charge, and over the years Dad opened six other G and H Hardwares. We all worked them as soon as we were old enough. But when our mom and dad were killed in a car accident eight years ago, Marti and Ry and I were left in the hot seat.”

      “How so?”

      “The builder’s-warehouse type of stores had begun to hurt us. Business was dwindling, and we had a fair offer to buy us out.”

      “Why didn’t you sell?”

      “Mainly because of Gram. She hasn’t always been as bad as she is but her problems weren’t too much better eight years ago than they are now—she needed live-in care, and that’s expensive. The offer to buy us out wouldn’t have left her with enough to provide for that indefinitely, and if Marti and Ry and I went our separate ways, working for other people, we couldn’t be sure we’d be able to afford to make up the difference over time. And the thought of having to institutionalize Gram…Well, we didn’t want that. So we decided to gamble. To play with the big boys rather than sell out to them. We closed all but one of our stores, and turned the only remaining G and H Hardware into the first Home-Max. Then we went from there. And it just worked out.”

      Neily was sure he was making it sound less complicated and stressful than it had been.

      “You must have always been close to Theresa to risk everything for her sake.”

      He shrugged. “Pretty close, yeah. And we just wanted what was best for her. Plus it seemed only fair that—since her money had helped begin things—we do whatever we could to keep them going. But it wasn’t for her sake alone. Marti, Ry and I wanted to go on working together, so it was for our sakes, too. We were all just lucky that we made it.”

      Still Neily thought it was admirable that Theresa’s family had considered her contribution and made her welfare a priority. Neily was also impressed that rather than taking the easy way out of caring for a grandmother with special needs, Wyatt and his siblings hadn’t cut and run when the opportunity to do that had presented itself.

      The more she learned about Wyatt, the more she leaned away from any thoughts of neglect.

      And toward liking him.

      They both had another drink of their hot chocolates before Neily decided to use his mention of Theresa as her opening to talk about the older woman. And keep herself from thinking things about Wyatt Grayson that she didn’t want to be thinking.

      “So even eight years ago Theresa was basically in the shape she’s in now?”

      He nodded, a sad, sober expression on his handsome face. “Gram has had mental-health issues as long as I can remember. She gets into severe depressions. She has times when she’s out of touch with reality, delusional—that’s happening more often as she ages. She was always fearful, and that developed into full-blown phobias—those are what started her being housebound and needing round-the-clock care, and why none of us can understand her doing what she did to get here.”

      “And the memory issues?”

      “Those are getting worse, especially her short-term memory. Sometimes she thinks that things that happened decades ago were just yesterday, and she forgets what did happen yesterday. She’s really a tortured soul.”

      “Does she have a specific diagnosis?”

      “A laundry list of them. And she’s on medications to treat them all, which helps to some extent. She’s also had therapy, but nothing has made a huge improvement.”

      “I’m assuming the possibility of early abuse has been looked into?” Neily said.

      “She’s denied that there was any of that. She makes her childhood sound perfect. Happy. She frequently says that she was the apple of her parents’ eyes, how much she loved them, how devastated she was when they died. I know that losing my grandfather caused more deterioration, and then losing my father brought on more still, so maybe there’s something to that.”

      “And even when she talked about her perfect childhood she didn’t tell you anything about Northbridge or that she still had the house here?” Neily asked, finding it curious that Theresa had been so secretive about that.

      Wyatt shook his head. “Like I said before, the only mention of where she grew up was a generality.”

      “So she didn’t tell you that her family—her father—had owned land here?”

      That seemed to surprise him. “No. You mean her father owned more than the house?”

      “She told me today that he—and then she—owned the section of land you can see from the sunporch, where there are houses now.”

      “Do you think it’s true?”

      Neily shrugged. “I’ve never heard that, but it isn’t as if I would have heard about who owned land twenty years before I was born. I was just wondering if maybe that should be looked into. If it’s true, maybe that’s what she thinks she can reclaim.”

      “Maybe that’s what was taken from her, you mean? Do you think someone stole it from her or swindled her?”

      Neily shrugged again. “I don’t know. I suppose old land records could be checked into.”

      Wyatt’s expression had gone from sad to intrigued. “Want to play detective with me?”

      Neily laughed. “I don’t think that’s in my job description.”

      “Might be fun, though,” he said with an alluring wiggle of his eyebrows.

      Too alluring.

      Neily reminded herself that she was supposed to be steeled against his charm. But apparently even early practice steeling herself against whatever her brothers threw her way was not enough when it came to resisting Wyatt Grayson.

      Both of their cups were empty by then and noticing that seemed like an aid to her cause. Rather than respond to Wyatt’s it-might-be-fun-to-play-detective-with-him, she said, “We should probably go.”

      Wyatt didn’t immediately agree. He went on looking at her, smiling as if he was enjoying the view. But he didn’t push the suggestion that she help investigate old land records and after a moment he stood and held her chair while she stood, too.

      He’d already paid for their hot chocolates, and now he tossed a tip onto the table before he followed Neily out of the shop.

      Don’t

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