Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (no david read aloud TXT) 📗

also knew there was not much to begin with and assumed that there could not now be much to disperse. Certainly not after their deaths were taxed, their cremation paid for, and Mr. Murdock himself duly compensated. For the second time that morning, she was wrong.

“Did you know that your parents had each taken out a life-insurance policy just a few days after you were born?” Mr. Murdock sat across the kitchen table from Rachel with coffee at his elbow and a sheaf of papers in his hands.

“No, I didn’t,” she replied. She had never heard them speak about such things.

“Well, they did, Miss Hearn. The types of policies that don’t mature. In other words, your parents could never have cashed them in.” He looked down at the table. “And, if your parents had died of natural causes, the policies would not have paid all that much. But your parents wanted you to be in good shape if they died suddenly, accidentally, as they in fact did.” After a moment he looked up at her, clearly uncomfortable with everything he had said but just as clearly anticipating her reaction to his next words.

“In a nutshell, Miss Hearn, each policy stipulated that, in case of the accidental death of the insured party, the beneficiary would be awarded one hundred fifty thousand dollars. And in both cases, the beneficiary is you and you alone.”

Which meant that Rachel Hearn was not only a twenty-year-old orphan but a relatively wealthy one as well.

The news of her inheritance had so startled Rachel that she’d found it easier not to think about it at the time. She had thanked Mr. Murdock and said she’d be in touch, shown him to the door, told him that she had to get ready for the funeral. He nodded, disappointed with her reaction, and went away. When he returned later that afternoon to pay his respects, he had the grace to keep his peace, certain that in time she would want to hear more about her inheritance and to claim it.

As Rachel sat on her porch, her feet aching from the cold creek water, waiting out the night, her unsought windfall still seemed so unreal that it didn’t bear close scrutiny. She thought instead about what she was going to do now that she was on her own.

No matter how hard she tried, Rachel couldn’t feel any kind of kinship with the good, clean girl she’d been only days before. Until Sunday afternoon, she had been a thoughtful daughter. A good friend. Well-groomed, upright, and honest. She had worried about the welfare of others, concerned herself with their happiness, and thought herself fulfilled along with them. She had been touched by everyone and everything in her immediate world. She had anticipated the needs of others, the repercussions of her every action, the consequences of her words, her deeds, even her thoughts.

My God, she thought. What a waste of time.

She remembered one day when she was maybe ten or eleven and her parents had taken her to a fair over on the far side of Randall. She had wanted a second hot dog and been willing to wait in a long, unruly line to get it while her parents sat on a bench, resting. When she finally reached the hot dog stand she found herself wedged between far bigger people. The hot dog vendor was running with sweat. His hands looked like meat from reaching into the steam after hot dogs. The smell of mustard was so strong it made Rachel’s eyes water. One after another, people who came up beside her reached for the hot dog that was meant for her, took it, paid, twisted away, and were gone.

She could have pushed right back. Summoned her parents. Made a fuss. But for many long minutes she simply stood there, mute, holding up her hand now and then as if she were in school, feeling oddly virtuous. She would not make things harder for the hot dog man. She would not—she would not—be rude. That these other people had no manners was no reason she should abandon hers.

A man who had squeezed past Rachel and dressed his hot dog now said to her, as he turned to leave, “You’ll never get anywhere in life if you don’t learn to speak up, girl.”

Rachel remembered feeling torn, then, between the urge to follow his advice (and start by speaking up to him) and her long-held conviction that being a good and patient girl was worth its price.

Sitting on her porch, Rachel thought about this decision. It was one she had made over and over and over again: to be the way she had always been. Even as an adolescent, curious and impatient, she had changed little, for she had really had no choice: everyone knew her as a certain kind of girl, and there was simply no way she could disappoint them. No worthy opportunity arose. No reason seemed good enough. And, in truth, she seldom felt the need to challenge the rituals she had practiced for so long. Until now. Somehow, the boys she’d known at college, and the death of her parents, and every other mean thing that had ever touched her life became twisted together and made it easy for Rachel to strip herself down and start all over again.

Her neighbors had noticed the change in Rachel as soon as she stepped off the bus early that Monday morning. She had not been rude or unkind in any way. But she had not reacted to them as they had expected she would. She had not cried on their shoulders. She had not bravely smiled. She had sought neither solace nor advice. She had been unmoved by the casseroles that they had tucked away in her fridge. She had been entirely too reserved for their liking.

What a waste of time, she thought again, sitting on her porch, her parents on their way to the sea. And energy. Who has the energy