Page 1 of The Will

Chapter 1

“HeyGrandpa,I’mbackfrom the store,” Chloe said.

Utter silence answered her, the kind of silence that makes your gut quiver with dread. Chloe had known her grandpa might die soon, but she didn’t expect it to happen this soon.

She called for him several more times but was only met with silence. A chill swept over her, making her shiver despite the sweater she was wearing. Her senses were heightened, and the tiny wispy hairs on her neck stood up. She knew something was wrong. Chloe made her way to her grandfather’s room to find him draped in his reading chair, his body positioned as if he had just finished a chapter and decided to take a nap.

His face was tinged a bluish-gray, and his arm was extended out against the arm of the brown wing chair. His shirt sleeve was unbuttoned and pulled up to his elbow. The small table to the right of his chair, which held the latest book he was reading, now held an array of items that would typically never have been left there. A syringe, which looked like it still might have some sort of clear liquid inside. A glass bottle of medication sitting to the side of that, which looked a lot like her grandpa’s insulin. Chloe knew it could not possibly be that since she kept the insulin locked in a box in the fridge. Upon closer inspection, it was not one of Grandpa’s regular bottles and not from his usual pharmacy. Not that anyone else would notice these things, as she was his sole caregiver. She touched his stiff neck in search of the pulse she knew she would not find, but she had to be sure.

Yes. He was definitely dead.

“What do I do now?” she whispered, immediately jumping at the sound of her own voice. “Call the police, of course,” she answered herself as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the emergency line.

“911 dispatch, what’s your emergency?” came the answer on the phone.

“My grandfather is dead,” she said. “Could you please send someone?”

“Are you sure he is dead?” the dispatcher asked. “Is he breathing? Does he have a pulse?”

“No, and no.” Chloe responded as a tear rolled down her cheek. She calmly said, “He is blue with no pulse, so he has been gone for a while. Please send someone, I’m not sure if this was a natural death.”

The dispatcher confirmed that an officer was on the way and ended the call.

Chloe thought, “What happens now?”

She had not thought about what would happen after Grandpa died. Her life had become consumed with caring for him. Her most important goal was helping the one man who believed her.

He was the one person who had not questioned if her feelings were wrong, or if she had misunderstood anything that had happened to her that night. He just listened while she poured out her pain and humiliation. Her overwhelming feelings of mortification after the assault came to the surface, as well as her shame and self-blame for falling for such an obvious trick by a person she already knew not to trust.

He had asked if she wanted to report it to the authorities, despite the time that had passed since the incident. Chloe had told him no, as she knew the way the system worked. She also knew how her uncle worked. He would have provided a narrative to others already. She had heard the rumors that had spread like ripples in the nearby lake. She knew that anything she said would not be accepted as truth at this point. So here she was, in a town she hated, wondering where her life was going to go now that her grandfather had died.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the young, twenty-something officer that came to the door with a stout knock. Several hours passed as the coroner and Crime Scene Unit worked through the house and detectives questioned Chloe.

Chloe sat down at the wooden dining table, the table where she and her grandfather had laughed, where they talked and ate their meals together over the last few years. She remembered the day she came here, right after college graduation. She had been called a prodigy with her knowledge of coding, but to Chloe, machines were easier to understand than people. Computers were simple. You get what you put into them. She remembered her grandfather always saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” With computers, that was always true. Computers were only as smart as the people coding them. They can’t do anything unless they are told.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” she thought. “A person telling you what to do. Giving you positive feedback if the formula was correct. Like some kind of good job emoji popping up in real life.” She sighed at the end of her thought.Peopling was hard.

“Oh shit, peopling,” she said aloud, “I didn’t call anyone.”

She pulled her phone from her back pocket and scrolled through her contacts for Eugene Harrison or “Uncle Gene”. Uncle Gene was Chloe’s mother’s brother. He was two years older than Chloe’s mom, Cindy, by birth. Now that Chloe’s mother had passed away, he was her next closest relative.

Uncle Gene had never made it a secret that he disliked her. First, it was a package deal, he would push Chloe’s mother and Chloe out of family functions and get-togethers. He had a habit of saying something at every gathering that would embarrass Cindy. Chloe never understood why her mother didn’t say a word to their parents. She would make excuses to Chloe and the rest of the family, then they would make themselves scarce and leave early. Her mom would never confront Uncle Gene or the situation, and Chloe never understood why.

Uncle Gene has a son also named Eugene, but Chloe always called him “Little Gene” he still hates the name to this day. He was a piece of work like his father. He always made Chloe uncomfortable. She felt like he always knew something she didn’t, and she would catch him looking at her like a lover- stripping her bare with his eyes.

The phone started ringing.

“Hello?” came the voice of her uncle. “Chloe?”

“Yes, it’s me.” The words felt like gravel in her throat. “I’m calling with some bad news. Grandpa was dead when I got home from the store today.” There is a pause of silence and then a sigh from her uncle. “I don’t know what happened, so I called the police. They have been here and gone. What else do you need me to do to help with this?” She regretted the question as soon as it passed her lips.

“Help with this? Really?” he spit the words out like they tasted foul in his mouth. “Don’t you think you have done enough? Are you sure your little pretend caregiver routine wasn’t to blame? Did you just have enough of waiting and kill him? I think that is more likely. We all know how you like to lie to cover for your poor decisions.” His words were venomous, coming through the speaker in shouts.

Chloe sighed this time. “I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t make up lies about anyone. I also did nothing to Grandpa to hurt him.”

Her uncle's voice was softer, but still filled with hints of disdain and sarcasm. “We will find out in the end, as I will make sure they investigate this. Especially since it took you so long to even inform me.”

Chloe was used to her uncle’s attitude and remarks, but it never failed to pop any sort of comfort bubble she had tried to erect. She always felt wrung out after her encounters with him. He seemed to relish sucking the life right out of her. Sometimes, when he would crank it up, she felt like it pulled her away from herself. It was like watching her own life playing through a screen. She could see and hear everything, but she was trapped and could not respond. Her uncle always accused her of “spacing out” when that happened, but Chloe was trying to escape, to stay safe. She swallowed her response, knowing she couldn’t allow her filter to slip when responding to her uncle’s hateful words.

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