Page 7 of The Cottage on Blueberry Bay

“I was surprised to learn he left anything to me,” she said, truthfully. Did this attorney understand the situation?

“Jacob left everything to you,” the attorney said.

“He left me everything?” She whispered to Remy.

Remy’s eyes lit up like she had won the lottery. “You’re kidding!’

Meredith’s mind started spinning and she asked the attorney, “Did he tell you why?”

“Excuse me?” the man said.

She covered the phone and said to Remy, “I don’t want his guilt money.”

“Jacob had his faults,” the man said thinking Meredith was talking to him. “But he did a lot for our community and—”

“Mr…?” Meredith interrupted him.

“Michaud,” he said.

“Mr. Michaud.” She took a deep breath trying to hold in her swirling emotions. “I’m sorry, I was talking to my sister. What do I need to do?”

“Well, he left you his house. It’s deeded to you, but you’ll need to record it in the town registry,” he said. “He also had a fishing boat.”

The thought of going through Jacob O’Neill’s things twisted her stomach. “Do I have to come to Maine to do all of this?”

“Yes, you will,” the attorney said. “Dr. Johnson said he had a key to the cottage, and I have—”

“What?” she interrupted him. “Gordon? He has a key to the cottage?”

“Your mother had one, I guess,” the attorney replied.

She looked at Remy, who silently mouthed, “What?”

Meredith covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “Mom had a key to Jacob’s cottage.”

This made no sense whatsoever to Meredith. “Are you sure?” she asked Quinn again.

“That’s what your father told me, yes.” Quinn sounded confused that she was surprised. “Would you like to meet, and I can go through all his assets with you?”

“How much are we talking about?” She didn’t believe a fisherman would have much.

“Jacob had quite a nest egg at the time of his death,” Quinn said.

“Really? A fisherman?” This shocked her. One of the reasons she had assumed he didn’t want to be a father was the financial uncertainties that fishermen endured. She calculated his age in her head. He had been eighteen when she was born, so that made him sixty-eight at his death. Could fifty years of fishing bring fortune?

“He hadn’t fished in years,” the attorney said. “It was his artwork that had been his primary source of income. He has the house, the boat, the land.”

The truth was she only wanted to see the statue. She had no interest in seeing the house of a guy who didn’t want to be her father. “Could you recommend a real estate agent? Someone who deals with estate sales, etc.?”

“You’re already thinking of selling?”

“Well, I live in Massachusetts,” she said. “What would I do with a house in Maine?”

“Oh, wow!” gasped Remy, who showed her phone’s screen to Meredith. “That’s the house.”

Meredith looked at Remy’s phone, and sitting on the end of the earth over a blue horizon was a gray shingled cottage.

“It’s gorgeous,” Remy whispered.

---