In the Forest of Light and Dark by Mark Kasniak Read Free Book Online

will become the sole beneficiary of your mother’s entire estate and monetary assets.
 
    Sincerely yours,
Adam Brown
CEO S&B attorneys at law
 
    Well, there you have it. A house, a Caddy, and more than 400K, all of it my mama’s for the taking. The only thing required of her was to keep the house—which apparently was a family heirloom—for one year, and then she could turn around and sell it if she wanted.
     But after having heard the contents of the letter I couldn’t help but get the strangest feeling—mostly because of the way my mama stared blankly at it, completely entranced—that my mama had somehow felt that the stipulation my grandmother had put in her will about us needing to keep the house for an entire year was somehow a little trick. A game my grandmother had played to try to bring my mama back home again to Mount Harrison.
     “You're gonna take it, right?” I had asked her after she’d finished reading the letter out loud, but she didn’t answer me. She just continued to stare emotionless at the letter as if it had put her in a dream.
     “Mama,” I said.
     “MAMA!”
     “W-What?” she finally stammered. “I... I don't know, sweetie. I'll have to talk it over with your stepfather when he gets back from the store.” she then told me sounding dismissive.
     At the time of all of this happening, like my mama had said, my Step Daddy Cade wasn’t home. He had gone down to the Walmart to pick up some motor oil for the Family Truckster and a couple of cases of Coke.
     “What do you mean you'll have to talk it over?” I then asked her. “There's nothin' to talk about. This is four hund—”
     “I said I'll have to talk it over with your step daddy when he gets back.” my mama quickly chided me, raising her voice and cutting me off mid-sentence. During which she hadn’t so much as even taken her eyes off the letter to acknowledge me as she said it. “Now, I don't want another word out of you about this until your step daddy and I have had a chance to figure things out.”
     “ Okay, fine.” I mumbled as I walked out of the kitchen in a huff.
     I can't never could understand my mama's logic sometimes though. You’d be dumber than a box of rocks not to get on the telephone right then that, very same minute and call those Schlitzmeyer and Brown fellows telling them, hell yeah you want to accept my grandmother’s offer. Hell, if someone had ever asked me if I wanted four hundred thousand dollars, a car, and a big ass house, my answer would’ve been along the lines of, Is a frog's ass waterproof? Fuck, Yeah! It is.
     After leaving the kitchen I had gone to my bedroom to watch television as I waited for my step daddy to get back from the store, but it was no use. After my mama had received that letter I could hardly contain myself. I had felt as if I had ants in my pants and I just had to get out of the house and tell somebody about our good fortune. So, I hopped on my bike and went over to Marzie Kirkland's house to share with her my family’s good news.
     After telling Marzie about the letter, she had said to me sounding eerily like a slack-jawed yokel, as she had a tendency to do sometimes, “Wow! Are you really tellin' the truth, no foolin' or anything?” Then, after I had insisted to her that I wasn’t making things up, she still wouldn't believe me until I had sworn upon my mama's life. But after she’d finally accepted that what I was telling her was the truth, she asked me, “What do you think your parents are gonna do? Doesn’t your mama hate New York and didn’t she end up running away from there back when she was our age?”
     I thought about what Marzie had just said for a moment and then replied, “Well, yeah... But what do you think she’s gonna do? She has to take the money. I mean, the shit she went through back when she was a kid was a real long time ago. Besides,