My mother never spoke of her parents, except to tell me that they’d mistreated her, and we were both happier without them.
“Yes,” I say. “Are you related to her?”
“I’m your cousin,” Sam says. “The son of your mother’s brother.”
This is making strange amount of sense, though I’ve heard that sometimes scammers unearth the records for your entire family to convince you that they’re real. It doesn’t matter how plausible this seems, if he asks me for money or bank account numbers, I’m resolved to hang up.
“You’re named after your father. My mother had a brother named Sam.” I recall.
“Yes.” Sam sounds pleased, though it might just be that he thinks I’ve been taken in. “I wasn’t sure if you’d even know that much. No one in the family has heard from your mother in twenty-five years.”
That would be about right, but it puts me on edge. I wonder what I’m even doing talking to this man if I’m going to interpret everything he says as a sign he’s trying to cheat me, but I can’t help it.
“There was a reason for that,” I say. I don’t know the details, but given what my mother went through to keep us both away from them, I’m sure that it’s true.
“Yes. Unfortunately, our grandmother was something of a witch, if you don’t mind me saying, and our grandfather was a weak-willed pansy who always let her have her way. I can’t say I wish you’d known them, but it’s a bit of a pity we can’t commiserate together about her spite and his enablement.” He lets out a chuckle.
I blink. I can’t imagine speaking about my family that way, but that’s probably because I didn’t know these people. What little I heard from my mother certainly dovetails with what he’s saying. “Okay. And your parents? Are you close to them?”
“My father died ten years ago,” Sam says. “But my mother and I are close, yes. The point, though, is that our grandmother cut your mother out of her will after she left the family. Your mother, from what I understand, couldn’t stand being shunned by the family for having a child out of wedlock, and God knows our grandmother wasn’t going to be the first to apologize. But as you never had the opportunity to offend her personally, she left your mother’s half of the inheritance to you.”
“To me? But she’d never met me.”
“Correct. That only served to increase her opinion of you. Imagined people always do exactly as we expect them to do.”
Sam’s voice is bitter.
“And you? You inherited the other half?” I’m hoping so, as I don’t want to offend Sam by being some imagined perfect granddaughter who takes everything from him. Though for all I know we’re jointly inheriting a storage unit full of broken furniture and old newspapers, so I’m not particularly concerned.
“Yes. As her only present grandchild, I also escaped unscathed, in no small part due to the ass kissing abilities of my mother.”
I smile. I find I’m hoping this isn’t a scam, as I like Sam, and his matter-of-fact attitude about the family my mother never wanted me to know. He doesn’t seem like he would be so horrible, and given his age, my mother probably didn’t have a specific opinion about him.
“So what is this inheritance?” I ask, letting my skepticism leak into my voice.
“It’s the family business,” Sam says. “A parfumerie. We export perfume all over the world.”
“That sounds lovely,” I say. A little romantic, even.
“Yes, we export to the tune of nearly a billion a year.”
I stare at what’s left of my eggs, growing cold on my plate. “A billion? A billion euros?”
“Yes. Though it’s not as if we take that much home. Though the profits are substantial, so if you join us your salary would be seven figures, plus dividends for your share, of course.”
“My salary?” I’m back to believing that this is a scam because there’s no way my relatives are billionaire perfume company owners.
Though now I’m remembering how my mother avoided perfume shops, always saying it was because every scent smelled like chemicals, and she preferred the smell of fresh, clean soap. How she often commented that rich people were full of themselves, or too judgmental, and yet how she also seemed to resent them, as if they had personally taken something from her.
I suppose if Sam is to be believed, my grandmother did.
“Yes,” Sam continues. “Our grandmother was staunchly against handouts. The will specifically says that you need to come and run the business if you want the money—dividends included. But don’t worry if you don’t have any training. We’ll teach you everything you need to know, and the job isn’t that hard. I do it, after all.”
I open my mouth and then close it again. I should probably respond to Sam’s slight on himself, but my mind is still spinning over the logistics. “I’d need to come work there?” I ask. “In Ireland?”
“Yes,” Sam says. “I thought the number looked strange. Are you not in Ireland now?”
My throat closes, and it takes me a moment to answer. “No. I just moved to America to be with my new husband.”