Page 7 of The Endowment Effect

“Goanae no dae tha heavy liftin’ on yer own, lass.”

She gladly conceded and together they were able to shut the trunk and secure the latch.

“Thank you, Angus, you have a way of always being there when I need you.”

His eyes followed hers toward the window.

“Ah’m fair scunnered by those two imbeciles,” he said, nodding toward the window and the circus outside. “They’ve bled you dry, they ‘ave.”

A true statement, but one she had no control over. “Unfortunately, Marshall miscalculated their level of ingenious spite and contemptible greed.”

If nothing else, they laid it out very simply for Birdie. If she wanted to avoid spending the next decade in court, potentially losing everything, all she had to do was walk away with all but nothing and her stepsons would allow Mia to receive the paltry inheritance bequeathed to her by her stepfather when she turned eighteen.

Without any interference from them.

All she had to do, after losing her business, was walk away from her controlling shares of Shepherd Industries and the one hundred and twenty-two million left to her by her husband in stocks and assets, and Mia would have a secure, unencumbered future free from years of legal drama.

From the back pocket of his trousers Angus retrieved a folded piece of paper, along with a dour expression. He was a no-nonsense, rip-the-Band-Aid-off sort of guy, and thrust the paper toward her. “Reckin, this be the last thing ya need, but the wee bairn has skedaddled aff.”

“What do you mean “skedaddled off”? Did she go to the mall?” She clutched the note as she stared out the window distracted by the twelve-seat dining room table she and Marshall had found during a trip to Sonoma being rolled up a ramp and into the back of a semi-trailer. “Call her and tell her to come back.”

“That’s no gonna ‘appen. That is to say, it appears Mia has left the premises, no to return.”

Birdie’s eyebrows slammed together, as her head spun his direction. “We’re supposed to leave Boston in less than an hour.”

The agreement was that she and Mia had to leave Boston proper and never return, so she secured a weekly sublet on the south shore of Massachusetts in Duxbury.

With no family of his own, and honoring the bedside promise he made to Marshall to look after his girls, Angus agreed to go with them.

The elderly Scot tilted his head toward her hand holding the piece of paper and looked at her with sad eyes and a wrinkled forehead expressing his concern. “She left ye a note, lass.”

Dropping the dress on the pile of items in the trunk, she opened the folded, typed letter and read:

Mom, please don’t worry. I’m fine. I located my deadbeat sperm donor of a bio-dad and thought this was as good a time as any to meet him. I know, he’s probably a shitheel. I mean, who wouldn’t want us, right? But I had to find him. I needed to know who I came from, even if it’s just to punch him in his (as Angus would say) “bawbag.” I hope you understand. I’ll call you when I arrive. Get this, the douche canoe lives in some backward-ass town in Georgia named Wayward. [eye-roll emoji] He’s probably some in-bred hillbilly missing his front teeth (that’s nothing against you by the way, I’m sure he had his teeth back when you did the dirty with him) and riding around town in a dilapidated pickup truck. Please don’t think I’m looking for him to replace Dad. Dad was/is irreplaceable… the very best of dads. But I guess curiosity got the better of me. I know, I know, I’ll probably regret it when he scratches himself, picks his teeth with a knife, and offers me a plate of seared flesh and a glucose-infused mason jar of sweet tea.

Love,

Mia

P.S. Please don’t be mad.

P.S.S. I left my report card, all A’s, woot-woot!! Maybe that will make you less mad??

P.S.S.S. Fun fact, P.S. stands for postscript and comes from the Latin word ‘postscriptum,’ which literally means ‘written after.’

Allowing the paper to drift to the floor, Birdie yanked her phone out of her back pocket.

The call went straight to voicemail.

“That sneaky little… she’s not answering,” she said, putting the phone on speaker and glancing at Angus, who was now more angry with Errol and Flynn than worried about Mia.

His wiry gray eyebrows pinched together, staring out the window and mumbling in a Scottish burr, “Yon two eejits are two-faced an’ nane of them’s prrretty.”

Mia’s high-pitched voice came over the phone’s speaker, suggesting the caller“Leave a message, or not, either way I’m cool.”

Oh, Birdie was going to leave a message, all right.

“Mia Beatriz Shepherd, call me as soon as you get this. And as an added incentive every hour that goes by, without receiving a call from you, is another year of isolation and servitude that will be added to your punishment. So, look forward to kitchen duty for the foreseeable future. And just so you know, you won’t be serving your vegan crap. You’ll be fixing Angus his beloved haggis, and I’ll be expecting a large slice of veal with a side of baby back ribs. Basically, anything with a face that has yet to reach puberty and was raised in an industrialized farming environment. So, unless you want to bone-up on your carnivore cooking skills, I recommend that You. Call. Me. Now.”

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