Legacy Locked (ch. 1-2)

Chapter 1

Heavy rain on a tin roof makes it hard to listen. And harder to think.

Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood riffed “Come on, baby, let the good times roll...” Will knew the song. “You only live but once, and when you're dead you're done."

Now another louder riff was drumming in his ears. “Trust nobody.”

Will stared at the patriarch’s oil portrait. Thick polished maple framed the man’s scowling face. His eyes squinted, as if looking into a storm. That man was never satisfied. The crease lines were deeper on the right side of his face, like a political statement or self-declaration. He always had to be right. To avoid scrutiny, his eyes focused on something off center, the next target to acquire. A new property. Another racehorse. A deeper asset map.

A wall of shelves was filled with trophies from decades of acquisitions. Bronze statues of racehorses from Secretariat to Barbaro. Custom-labeled bottles of Macallan whiskey. Lucite blocks of stock certificates from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and regional investment firms. Man of the Year awards from the Williamson County Chamber and the Brentwood Rotary. Engraved bulls celebrating out-sized returns. A property map with potential acquisitions. Color coded pins- bronze-silver-gold for quicker decision making.

Jack Dawson was Will’s father. The patriarch in the oil painting. Finally unable to speak.

“Well, you old bastard, all those bourbons and Cohiba cigars finally caught up to you.”

Will kept muttering, “Now what do you expect us to do?”

He picked up the golf putter and drove an imaginary ball into the wall. But his eyes never tracked the ball.

Instead, he walked over to the old man’s desk, the Reliance oak desk. Another acquisition stolen from a Confederate landowner in that “War of Northern Aggression.” Amid more silver and bronze statues of racehorses he picked up the desk keepsake. Granite on the backside. Black trim on the front side. Gold letters designed to be eternal reminders.

“Protect our assets. Trust nobody.”

“How many times had Will heard his father declare that pledge? At the end of business meetings. With his sisters. Like an epitaph.” They didn’t need a family flag to remind their people. For the past 36 years, those words had been uttered more religiously than a prayer before any meal.

He scanned the shelves once again. Where would the old bastard hide those estate documents?

Another meeting with the Chamberlain attorneys was scheduled for Friday afternoon. But Will didn’t want to go empty handed.

He returned to the Reliance desk. As a child he had discovered a hidden drawer and imagined that there must be more secret drawers. He got down on his knees and stroked the ancient oak under both sides. No triggers. No succession plan. No career clarity.

His phone buzzed with a text from Emily. Jack’s first wife. The one woman who could have read him bedtime stories, if she had cared about him.

“Will, something’s wrong. I can’t find the documents that Jack left for me years ago. They were in my wall safe. Call?”

The Chamberlain attorney meeting loomed like a deadline. Will needed to find those legal documents. And Emily needed to find them too. Will kept muttering, “How ironic that we are searching at the same time, in two different houses. Confusion from the grave. What a fine legacy from your sudden death.”

Will texted, “Not now. Busy.” And he made sure that his phone was muted.

Then he stared at the silent oil painting. “Maybe you wanted us to be confused. Maybe you wanted us to fight over the properties until one of us emerged bloody with a majority ownership. You always liked fights.” Will picked up the putter again and stared out the window at the heavy rains pummeling the tin roof and wall of windows.

He hoisted the Taylor Made Spider X club with practiced ease but didn’t swing the club. He had no distant green or target.

“Screw this...” he muttered. “Time to do something productive.”

Will walked away from Jack’s office to the South Wing, where he roomed.

He stepped on his Peloton bike and pushed the buttons for a scenic ride in Tuscany. Time to spin. Time to recall some of the family history. Maybe there were clues from the past.

He thought about Emily, because of her text. Jack’s first wife. She was a beauty who never blossomed. One of her vices was Chardonnay, and Emily preferred to drink alone. That way no one would tell her when she had too much. Now she lived alone, adored by her four gigantic white Persian cats. Never remarried. Never had children, which was a second reason for their divorce. Yet she retained the Dawson surname.

Franklin, Tennessee is a small town with provincial pride. And Emily had been a tennis player at Old Miss. That era ended at a Delta Gamma sorority party, under the rose awnings, when a sorority sister introduced her to a tall man who lived near Nashville. He wore white seersucker pants and a smirk. She fell hard. They were married a month after graduation. The charcoal and rose wedding invitations promised, “Jack and Emily forever.”

But after 7 years without children Jack was done with her. Both parties agreed to irreconcilable differences. No-fault divorces are easy to implement when there are no capital assets. Emily got the divorce and kept the Dawson surname.

Jack went back on the hunt and somehow fell into bed with a stunning brunette named Regan, a widow with 3 kids. Will was their eldest and only male. The girls, N and S, lived nearby but hated to talk about the family businesses.

“Emily, you were never part of this family” Will kept muttering. “You were always potential energy, like a rose that never blossomed. What can you do for me now?”

Will cranked on the Peloton resistance knob and raced through the Tuscany vineyards, amid a rush of memories. “Spin faster. You’ve got this!”

Jack and Regan were a power couple at a time when rural Nashville needed more power couples. Jack like to hunt quail and never had enough land. Regan liked to buy racehorses. But women were expected to wear flouncy hats with feathers and white dresses at the Percy Warner steeplechase. They were expected to drink mint juleps, gossip about musicians, and agree with the men who ran them around. Not Regan. She drank single malts with the men in private showings where there were no other women. And she flirted until those men shared secrets about genetic flaws and questionable bloodlines. When it was time to haggle prices, she usually got her number, and the sellers got a “you’re such a dear.” And a kiss on the cheek.

Within a decade they were the largest landowners in Williamson County and had four steeplechase grand winners. They bought land from old farmers and old churches. The Dawson name was suddenly a regional brand.

When the Wall Street Journal declared Nashville, Tennessee an “It City” the region officially exploded. Music City plus. Healthcare giants like HCA spawned 400 related companies and countless millionaires. Bridgestone, Nissan and Mitsubishi relocated their corporate headquarters for tax benefits. Amazon, Oracle, and Alliance Bernstein quickly followed. The airport added concourses and became international. The Dawson Brand became the largest real estate developer within 100 miles. And Nashville was recognized as the #1 fastest growing region in the U.S.

Then Jack Dawson suddenly died on Tuesday, at age 61. And now what are we supposed to do?

Ch. 2.

Sometimes, like when spinning on a scenic ride, Will imagined living elsewhere. Tuscany, Italy, looked lovely today. He imagined spinning over hills and through ancient villages that were strangely empty. Timeless. His flow state. He checked the leaderboard. Sorted by age and gender. 12,456 riders. He was at 1,378. Got to crank it up to be in the top 10%. Argh!

Or not.

Will clicked the phone on his watch. “Hey sis, whatcha doing?

N picked up her phone, “Same old. Let me walk outside.” N grabbed a cheap yellow umbrella from her foyer and walked down the stones toward the garage. When she reached the corner, she glanced back at the house to make sure that she was alone.

[ Readers- fiction is a new genre to me. Any comments or advice? Should I continue?]