“I told you I would help,” I said.
“Well, I’d like to pay you for your time.”
I rose my eyes to meet his as he stood at the sink washing off his plate.
“You cooked, I clean. Remember?” I asked.
He grinned and my heart slammed against my chest.
Why did he have to go?
“How does one hundred dollars an hour sound?”
My fork fell to my plate for the second time as my jaw unhinged. And I didn’t even try to conceal my shock. He wanted to pay me what? He had that kind of money!?
“That’s way too much,” I said. “Anton didn’t pay me nearly that much.”
“Well, I’m not Anton,” he said.
“No. You’re not paying me for doing this. I offered to help. Anton was my friend. A good friend. An impactful friend. You’re not paying me to help you distribute things according to his will.”
“Well, you’ll never become a billionaire if you keep giving your time away for free,” he said with a chuckle.
“Well, I’m not at risk to become a billionaire anyway, so I don’t have to worry about it,” I said, giggling.
“One hundred dollars an hour is my final offer. If you don’t take it, you don’t get to help.”
“That’s not fair. What do you have against me helping you?”
&n
bsp; “Nothing. But I am going to pay you for your time. Anton was your friend, yes, but he didn’t appoint you in his will to help with all this. I’m enlisting your help because I’ll need it, and I don’t enlist help without paying for it.”
I furrowed my brow at his statement. Was he a business owner or something?
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll take the job.”
“Good. Where do we start?” he asked.
“I need a list of the possessions Anton’s giving away. We have to organize it according to people in the community. If we just go driving around, it’ll take us a lot more time. We need to match names and locations to things, and we’ll need a road map to follow.”
“I’ve got that list somewhere. Let me go get it,” he said.
I took my plate over to the sink and cleaned it off while he went to search. Finally, I felt like I had a purpose again. It was a purpose that would soon dissipate over the coming days, but at least I had something to fill my time with. I washed my hands and wiped my mouth off one last time, then sat down at the table just as Gray walked back in.
“Here is it,” he said.
He slapped a stack of papers in front of me before he eased himself into his chair.
“I don’t need the will. Just the list,” I said.
“That is the list.”
“What?”
He chuckled as he leaned forward onto his forearms.
“Anton has a lot of stuff. Almost everyone in this town is getting something from him. Like I said, it’s a hefty job.”