“Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Hunt said, and sat down as the secretary picked up the phone.

Within moments, a tall fortysomething man with sandy-brown hair emerged, his hand outstretched.

“Mr. Knox, I’m Peanut Butterman. My sympathies on your loss. Please come into my office.”

“Just call me Hunt,” he said, and took a seat in front of Peanut’s desk.

Peanut waved a hand to his secretary.

“Betty, would you please bring me the file on Marjorie Knox?”

Betty stepped into an adjacent room where hard copies of clients’ files were kept and pulled the one for Marjorie Knox, then laid it on his desk before leaving them alone.

Peanut quickly scanned the paperwork, which included a cover letter and the will he’d written for her a few years back.

“Okay… You do know she named you the executor?” Peanut asked.

Hunt nodded. “I didn’t until I received her letter. It took a few weeks for it to catch up to me,” he said, and took the letter out of his pocket and handed it to Peanut to read.

Peanut read it, then handed it back.

“Of course, I’m not going to pry, but she alludes to hard feelings between you and your siblings. However, the will is straightforward. The property is to be sold and proceeds divided five ways, so that shouldn’t be an issue.”

“I guess you could call it hard feelings,” Hunt said. “One of them, or maybe all three of them—they never would admit any of it—stole money I’d saved to go to college. Over $8,000. It took me over four years of mowing yards, raking leaves, and sacking groceries to save it up. And the morning I’m leaving for school, it was gone. We had one hell of a fight about it. But all of my siblings backed each other, and no one would say who’d done it. My dad told me to forget it and figure something else out. Mom wasn’t there. She’d taken my little sister to school, so she came home to me gone and everyone clammed up as to what had happened. Mom and I stayed in touch, but I never came back. Until today.”

“Good lord,” Peanut said. “That must have been devastating. What did you do?”

“Joined the army. Flew Apache helicopters in Iraq until I was shot down. Now, for the most part, I fly oil-field workers back and forth to offshore drilling rigs.”

Peanut leaned back in his chair, eyeing the man before him with new respect.

“I know she wanted the house fixed up before it was sold. Do you intend to do what your mother asked?”

Hunt nodded. “I arrived in time to see her before she passed. I told her I’d keep my promise.”

“Well, that explains a part of what’s in her will. If your siblings have copies, then they already know it. Do you have a copy?”