Daxter
The morgue smelled like chemicals and wasted love. I paced around with my hands in my pockets as I waited for my sister, who was still talking to the doctor and to a police officer.
It was another five minutes before she came out of the room. At thirty-three, my sister was just a year older than I was but she looked like she was just twenty. She had silky smooth black hair and bright green eyes. She was tall too and for a long while, she worked as a model until someone discovered she was a good writer and published her mystery-thriller novels.
“Ugh, I can’t believe all this horse shit,” she said as she walked up to me and pushed me down to sit with her on the hospital seats. “The police officer said the truck driver might be able to walk away from this.”
“What? Why?” I couldn’t believe it either. “He was drunk, Gary’s dead and it’s not like the crash site can be wiped away. That’s a whole lot of evidence right there. He should at least get in jail for reckless driving, a DUI and homicide.”
She nodded and wiped away her tears, “That’s what I said too but the officer explained the driver hired a lawyer. Now they’re saying they have a defense and that the truck was at fault because it had unresponsive brakes. We’ll need to sue the company if that defense wins and a case against the whole company could take forever.”
I slammed a fist against the wall, “Damn it!”
“That’s not the only issue, Dax,” Sonya said. She looked at me directly into my eyes and held on to my hand. “This one is something you’re going to want to soak in.”
I swallowed hard and held my breath. “What is it?”
“It’s about mom and dad,” she explained. “They wanted to name me as their heir now that Gary’s gone but I refused. I told them the family business should go to you.”
Those words smacked me like a slap to the face. My jaw dropped in shock and I looked at my sister with confusion and surprise, “What? Why me? I don’t deserve it.”
“You don’t,” Sonya said flatly. “You’ve been wasting money on girls, clubs and a lot of other nonsense but nobody cared because Gary was there to pick up the slack. You can’t just do that anymore, little brother. I’m fine with what I have but the family business needs to go to someone and that someone has to be you. It has to be within the family. Otherwise, dad might name his vice president as the heir and then we’ll lose everything.”
“Why can’t it be you?” I got frantic.
She shook her head, “Like I said, I’m fine. I’ve already built an empire with my books and the hotels I own. You, on the other hand, you’ve got nothing except what they give you. You were a firefighter but now you’re just playing games being a model.”
“So you’re telling me I need to grow up,” I rolled my eyes. I heard this speech before. I heard it so many times from my sister, from my brother, from my parents and all my aunts and uncles. It was always the same: I was irresponsible, I was immature and I was just fooling around while my sister and brother were doing their part for the family.
Sonya sighed and shook her head, “I’m saying I want you to inherit our family wealth and business, but in order to do so, you need to prove yourself to mom and dad. Once they sign the papers, you can drop everything and do whatever you please. I’m just looking out for you, Dax. I don’t want mom and dad to leave you out.”
I nodded. If I got left out, I’d lose everything. I didn’t have a big job to pay for my condominium or my car. Sure, I earned a lot from modeling but even that wouldn’t be enough to sustain my extravagant lifestyle. Without my parent’s money, I’d be buried in debt and worse.
“I get it,” I told Sonya. “But I don’t see how I can convince mom and dad to sign me as the inheritor when all my life they’ve seen me as the extravagant playboy.”
Sonya pursed her lips and thought about it. “Well, we need to start painting a new image for you. That might mean getting you a job and a steady girlfriend, one that they can get used to and identify you with. Remember they’ll judge you according to the people you hang out with and a girlfriend will be the deciding factor for that.”
I raised his hands in refusal, “Wait, hold on a minute there, hit the brakes – I can’t do that. I haven’t had a steady girlfriend since I dated Jean in high school and that was what, twelve years ago?”
“What about that girl, Elena? The one you introduced to me back in college?” Sonya thought I had a steady girlfriend back then.
“Dated her for a week and a half,” I admitted sadly. “Look, this is a lot to think about. I do want mom and dad to sign me as the inheritor, now that you put it into my head, but I still need to really think about how t
o go about this.”
Sonya patted me on the back, “You’re good with girls. I bet you can stick around with one longer than a weekend. Look, I got to go back in there and start dealing with Gary’s funeral and everything. I just want to get over with this. I got this, okay? I want you to just focus on impressing mom and dad.”
I nodded and watched her get up to talk to the people at the hospital morgue. I watched as she disappeared behind white doors and left me to sit and ponder how a single moment completely changed the direction of my life.
“Guess I have to cancel that date with Tatyana and Jessica,” I whispered to myself. I didn’t know if I was supposed to be sad about that or if I had to accept that it was time to move on from that kind of life.
I shook my head in frustration and buried my face in my hands. “Fuck!”
I dug into my pants and pulled out my phone. I swiped and logged into my Facebook account.
“Gary, I love you. I miss you already,” I typed in my status and then posted it on my page. In just a few more minutes of scrolling, I got a notification.
It was a message from Noelle, one of my high school friends. It was a message of condolences. That put a smile on my face. It had been forever since I last heard from her. I wondered what she had been up to in recent years.