“This is lame.”
“Says you. The food is awesome.”
“Holy crow, who paints a ceiling like that?”
Fifteen-year-old Chance Foley tugged at his necktie for the billionth time and gazed at his three companions sitting on the other side of the table at the Galaxy Ball. His brother, Logan, had naturally been the one to complain, because Logan, at nineteen, complained about everything and thought he was better than everyone else. Certainly better than the three fifteen-year-olds their mother had made him promise to keep an eye on tonight. Chance’s friend Felix Suarez was shoveling his dessert into his mouth like it was the last bite of food he’d ever get, even though he lived above his grandmother’s restaurant. And his other friend Max Travers, whose hand-me-down suit fitted him even worse than Logan’s hand-me-down fitted Chance, was staring fascinated at the high ceiling overhead.
Chance looked up, too. Max had a point. Although the whole ballroom of Mrs. Pendleton Barclay’s estate was pretty gnarly, the ceiling was super trippy. Bright blue and dotted with stars, there was a giant sun and moon in the middle surrounded by cartoon renditions of all the planets. And streaking through the middle of them was a comet. Comet Bob. It actually had a more official handle, the name of the Eastern European scientist who discovered him, but that name had more consonants than vowels and more syllables than anyone was comfortable with, so Comet Bob it was.
It was the whole reason for the party tonight. Mrs. Barclay’s Galaxy Ball was the final event of the month-long Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival that the small southern Indiana town of Endicott hosted every fifteen years. Comet Bob came back to Earth every fifteen years, always during the third week of September, and he always made his closest pass to the planet at coordinates that were directly above Endicott. It was an anomaly scientists had been trying to explain for generations, but meanwhile the little town had come to claim it as their own.
“I think the ceiling’s dope,” Chance said. “It would be cool to live in a place like this.”
Not that it would ever be in the cards for the Foleys. His dad had been killed by a drunk driver when Chance was twelve, and his mother was newly recovered from a bout with cancer that had dumped the family into medical debt they weren’t likely to ever crawl out from under. But Chance didn’t care about the money. He was just glad his mom was okay. Hell, if he had to work his part-time job at the boatyard for the rest of his life to help pay off her medical bills, he would.
“Mrs. Barclay is such a weirdo,” Logan said.
“I think she’s nice,” Chance told him. “Not many rich old ladies would invite a bunch of fifteen-year-olds to a house like this.”
Then again, Chance and his friends—and all the other fifteen-year-olds at the party tonight—weren’t just any fifteen-year-olds. They’d all been born the last year Bob came around. In Endicott, you didn’t get much more prestige than being born in a year of the comet. Too bad it didn’t bring riches, too.
It could, though. Maybe. A lot of folklore had risen up around Comet Bob over the years. Like the bit about making wishes. Legend had it that if someone in Endicott was born in a year of the comet, and if that person made a wish when Bob came back, then that wish would come true when Bob returned next time. So late last night, when the comet was directly overhead, Chance had sent his wish skyward—a wish for a million dollars. He didn’t care if it took fifteen years for it to come true. His mom would have barely made a dent in her medical bills by then. A million bucks, he was sure, could pay off whatever was left. Then he and his mom and his brother could put the whole terrible ordeal of her illness behind them forever.
“Hey, did you guys make a wish last night?” he asked his friends. “I did.”
His friends exchanged an anxious glance.
“Um, yeah. Okay. I guess I did, too,” Felix confessed.
Max exhaled a defeated sound. “All right. Fine. I did, too.”
“Wishes?” Logan asked incredulously. “You guys actually made wishes when Bob passed overhead?”
“Shh,” Max shot back. “Will you please keep it down? The wishes may not come true if other people hear, even if we were all born in the last year of the comet.”
Logan shook his head at the three younger guys. “Incredible. Just what the hell did you wish for?”
Max dropped his glance to his lap. “I wished Marcy Hanlon would see me as something other than the lawn boy.”
Chance bit back a smile. The worst kept secret at Endicott High School was Max’s unrequited love for Marcy, whose family was so rich and so much higher on the social ladder than practically anyone in Indiana he might as well have been pining for a Greek goddess. Good luck filling that wish, Bob.
“I wished for a million dollars,” Chance offered readily. He didn’t care if anyone knew what he wished for. It was a legit request.
Felix added, “And I wished that, just once, something interesting would happen in this town.”
Oh, sure. That was even less likely to happen than Marcy Hanlon seeing Max as something other than the lawn boy. Comet festivals aside, nothing interesting ever happened in Endicott.
Chance was about to say something else, but a blonde lady at the next table suddenly turned around and smiled at them. “Be careful what you wish for, boys,” she said. She took the hand of the dark-haired man sitting beside her. “Because you know…you might just get it.”
They both smiled as they stood up and walked toward the ballroom exit. For some reason, as he watched them go, Chance couldn’t quite shake the idea that whoever the lady was, she was a comet kid, too, and Bob had done right by her this year and granted her wish.
It was a good sign. Maybe in fifteen years he really would have a million bucks dropped into his lap. Maybe, somehow, the next time Bob came around, he really would make Chance’s wish come true.
Chapter One
Fifteen years later
Chance Foley concentrated hard on unclenching his fists, breathing slowly and reminding himself again that 10:00 a.m. was too early in the day to start drinking. September was turning out to be one hell of a month, and it was barely half over.
It had started on day one, when his beloved vintage Jeep Cherokee rolled into the Ohio River while he and his friend Max were trying to secure his other friend Felix’s boat onto its trailer. But the news he’d received three days ago had topped even that. He’d learned that his brother, Logan, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from for more than a decade, had died—along with a wife Chance never knew he had—in a freak avalanche while snowboarding in Austria.
One of the many things troubling him at the moment was the realization that he was probably going to miss his Jeep more than he was going to miss his brother. Even before he and Logan had become estranged, they’d never been especially close. That was partly due to the four-year gap in their ages, but also due to the fact that Logan had grown into a typically self-absorbed teenager and never really considered his little brother to be much more than a pest. The only thing Chance knew for sure right now was that Logan and his wife, Adele, had left behind two little kids, six-year-old twins Chance had never known about, either.
Six-year-old twins who were about to become his wards.
“Mr. Foley?”
Chance snapped up his head to look at the tidy, buttoned-down man sitting behind the reception desk of Novak and Hamza, attorneys-at-law. Lionel Abernathy—he’d introduced himself upon Chance’s arrival earlier. And never in his life had Chance met someone whose name seemed to match his demeanor more perfectly.
“Yes?” Chance replied.
“I’m sorry for your wait. Ms. Digby just texted. She’s on her way now and should be here anytime with the children.”
The Ms. Digby Lionel was referring to was a Boston attorney who would be meeting with Chance this morning to introduce him to his niece and nephew and go over the particulars of his brother’s will.
“Thanks,” Chance replied.
Lionel hesitated. “I take it you haven’t met them yet?”
Chance shook his head. “No. Ms. Digby said they’d be getting in too late yesterday to arrange a meeting. Have you met them?”
The receptionist nodded. “I picked them up at the airport in Louisville last night to drop off a company car for Ms. Digby to use while she’s here in Endicott. The children are, um, they’re just, ah, just delightful.”
The way he stumbled over the last word gave Chance pause. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Lionel hastily offered, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Bottle of water?”
Chance shook his head. “No. Thanks. I’m good.”
“I’m sure Ms. Digby will only be a few more minutes.” He threw Chance a thin smile, then went back to his work.
Chance ran both hands through his dark hair and leaned back in his chair. He wished he’d had time for a haircut—he was long overdue—and he felt weirdly overdressed in simple khakis and a white oxford shirt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn these clothes. But they were the dressiest he owned, and he’d felt like he needed to make the best impression possible. His only interaction with Poppy Digby so far had been through emails, and in those she hadn’t sounded anywhere near as fun and lighthearted as her name would suggest. She’d been matter-of-fact and straight-to-the-point about everything, using the sort of language that was probably supposed to be comforting—but not really—and doing her best to be reassuring—which she didn’t quite manage.
The dichotomy between her bubbly name and her sober email demeanor had made Chance curious enough to google her. But that hadn’t helped at all, because in every picture he’d seen of her, she looked like a pinstriped pixie, something that just added to the puzzle. Her bio on the website of the Boston law firm where she worked had been even less helpful, telling him little more about her than her educational and professional credentials. Which, yeah, were impressive, but they still didn’t seem to suit her. Not a word about her interests or what she might do for entertainment, which were normally included in a lot of professional profiles. Unless maybe the part about how she spent her spare time reading biographies of economists and pursuing an interest in cacti was supposed to cover that.
All Chance knew for sure about her was that she was bringing his niece and nephew, Quinn and Finn—Seriously, Logan? You had to give them names like that?—to her firm’s sister law office here in Endicott, and they’d be arriving this morning at 9:30 a.m. sharp. That had been twenty-five minutes ago. Tardiness was another thing that didn’t seem to fit Poppy Digby. It only added to the surreal quality of his own life at the moment.
Two kids. Chance was going to be responsible for raising two kids. What the hell had Logan and his wife been thinking to name him as their preferred choice of guardian for their children? There had to have been dozens of people in their current lives who would be more familiar to the kids and better prepared to take on a task like that.
It was hard to not be angry at his brother for not telling him. For six years, Chance could have been the fun uncle, mailing off Christmas gifts and cash-stuffed birthday cards to the next generation of Foleys. Having the kids visit every summer to get to know them better, or flying up to Boston himself once in a while to let them show him their favorite places to visit in their hometown.
But no. Logan had left Endicott to make his way in the world when Chance was sixteen, barely a week after they buried their mother. It evidently never occurred to him that leaving behind a minor brother might be a bit problematic for said minor brother. Chance had spent the next year and a half couch surfing with Felix and Max, whose families had been kind enough to take him in, until he could sign a lease on his own place when he turned eighteen. Life hadn’t exactly gotten easier after that, but he’d had a good job at the boatyard and a gift for carpentry, inherited from his father, that had led to his learning the craft of boatbuilding. Not that there was a lot of that going on these days, but there was enough, along with the more regular income from his marine repair shop, for him to keep himself fed and clothed and housed and still put a little away every month for the future.
Of course, now he was going to have two more people to feed and clothe and house. Quinn and Finn. Seriously, Logan? Seriously? Two people he knew nothing about and who in turn knew nothing of him. Two people he was going to be responsible for for the next god knew how many years. He’d have to enroll them in school and become a member of the PTA. Cook regular nutritious meals for them. Keep tabs on what they watched on TV and what games they played and make sure they were home before dark.
Was Quinn a typical little girl? Did she like glitter and unicorns and all things pink? Or was she more into bugs and skateboards and mud pies? Maybe Finn was the one into glitter and unicorns and all things pink. Maybe neither of them was. Maybe they were both empty vessels hungry for knowledge. In which case, Chance was really in trouble, because pretty much the only thing he knew about was boats.
He heard a door open and close somewhere down the hall, followed by the heavy clack-clack-clack of sensible heels and the softer scuff of rubber-soled sneakers. Ms. Digby and the children had arrived.
The knot in his stomach clenched tighter. He heard another door open and close, the mumble of voices both old and young, and then the law office was silent again. Until a moment later when, out of nowhere, a high-pitched scream split the air of the reception room, followed immediately by the crash of something that sounded really, really expensive. Lionel heard it, too, his previously polite expression rocketing to panic.
“What was that?” Chance asked.
“I guess I should go check,” Lionel replied.
He stood and strode down a hallway to his left. Chance heard a door open again, then another scream—this one less high pitched and more wild-animal sounding—followed by the thump of what could have been a baseball, a book, or a body part.
“Ms. Digby!” The receptionist cried out in a way that sounded so, so not good. “That was Ms. Novak’s Vander Award! It’s Baccarat crystal!”
“Lionel,” Ms. Digby replied in a voice Chance could tell she was struggling to keep even. “Do you mind keeping an eye on the children for a few minutes while I talk to Mr. Foley?”
Lionel muttered something in a strangled voice that sounded a lot like, Are you out of your effing mind?
Whoa, Lionel, WTF? There are children present. You seemed so professional. Not cool, dude.
“Give Finn your phone,” Chance heard Ms. Digby tell Lionel.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“The children’s devices were all packed by mistake,” Ms. Digby explained, “and they become distracted easily. I assume you have some sort of app on your phone that will keep Finn occupied. Quinn has very much enjoyed What’s That Cactus? on mine.”
“No,” Lionel said decisively.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
That seemed to give Lionel pause. “What kind?”
“Whatever kind you want.”
Lionel immediately named one in the two-thousand-dollar range. Chance knew that because he’d recently priced new phones for himself and had laughed himself silly when he saw the cost of that model.
That didn’t seem to deter Ms. Digby, however. “Done. Now give Finn your phone. Quinn already has mine.”
Chance heard her clack a few steps toward the waiting room, then she stopped. “And, Lionel.”
“Yes, Ms. Digby?”
“Do not take your eyes off those children for a moment.”
Chance told himself he only imagined an audible gulp from the receptionist. “Yes, Ms. Digby.”
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. Ms. Digby entered the reception room in a way that might have been imperious had it not been for her appearance. She was in fact wearing pinstripes—a slender skirt and double-breasted jacket in no-nonsense navy—but the former was splattered with what looked like the better part of a milkshake, and the latter was hanging haphazardly open over a wrinkled blouse and crooked string of pearls. Her short dark hair, so perfectly styled in the photos he’d seen, was sticking straight up in a couple of places, and her round tortoiseshell glasses were askew.
She managed to straighten those glasses—mostly—as she approached, her gaze steady and confident when it met his, her eyes the clearest pale green Chance had ever seen. Green, too, was a splotch of something on her chin, just below her slightly smudged red lipstick. He’d been with Max often enough when the other man ordered one of those matcha drinks at Julie’s Java Joint to suspect it was a remnant of one of those.
“Mr. Foley,” she said as she switched a leather briefcase from her right hand to her left and extended the former confidently toward him. Automatically, Chance shook it. She had a solid grip, he’d give her that. “Please accept my condolences for the loss of your brother and sister-in-law.”
“Thanks,” he replied automatically. Her voice was as intriguing as the rest of her, deep and kind of husky for a woman, especially one her size. Which, even wearing sensible heels, was a good six inches shy of Chance’s six-one.
“I know you’re anxious to meet your niece and nephew,” she continued, “but it would be helpful if you and I could have a moment to speak in private first about your brother and sister-in-law’s wishes.”
“Okay,” he said. Truth be told, he didn’t mind stalling for a little while longer. He was still kind of, oh, terrified about the prospect of becoming a guardian.
“If you’ll follow me?”
She was turning around before she finished to head down a hallway opposite the one from which she’d come. Because it was a Sunday, the offices were empty. Lionel had probably only come in to unlock the place for Ms. Digby.
She led Chance to a room that was plain and functional, a run-of-the-mill meeting room as opposed to someone’s office. A long table bisected the space with a dozen chairs surrounding it. She took a seat near the head, gestured at the one across from her for Chance, then slung her briefcase up on the table.
He sat down, and as she withdrew some documents from her bag and began to sort through them, he looked out the bank of windows behind her. The Old Town part of Endicott, where the law office was located, sat on a hill that looked out over the Ohio and an especially green part of Kentucky on the other side. It was a gorgeous day, the sky blue and clear, a soft breeze rippling the trees. Between the law office and the river, the town descended into tidy homes along tree-lined streets, then to a good-sized marina where all manner of watercraft bobbed and tugged at their moorings. Even more boats dotted the river beyond. On any other Sunday like this, Chance would have been right out there with them in the vintage runabout he’d rebuilt from near scratch. There was nothing he loved more than being on the water.
“Now then, Mr. Foley—”
“Call me Chance,” he interrupted gently. He was never comfortable when people called him Mr. Foley more than once.
Ms. Digby—Poppy, he corrected himself, since he didn’t like using honorifics for other people, either—looked like she wanted to call him Mr. Foley even more emphatically.
“How much do you know about your brother’s situation?” she asked.
“Only what I was told by the cops who showed up at my door a few days ago to tell me about the accident and what you told me in your emails after that.”
She nodded. “And you mentioned you didn’t even know he was married with children.”
“No, I didn’t even know where he was before you contacted me about his will. And the part about him having a will—not to mention including me in it—almost surprised me more than the part about him having a family.”
“Why would that surprise you?”
“Because neither of us is…was…the planning type. No one in my family was. We never had enough to worry about the future.”
“Don’t you have a will now?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s never seemed necessary.”
“Don’t you want to provide for your loved ones after you’re gone?”
“I don’t have any loved ones to provide for,” he said simply.
Her expression changed, and it made something inside Chance twist tight. It had been a long time since anyone had felt sad for him. That a total stranger would be now… Well, it made Poppy Digby seem like a lot less of a stranger.
“I guess now that I’ll be caring for Quinn and Finn, I should get a will made up,” he said.
She nodded. “I can arrange for someone here at Novak and Hamza to contact you.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She glanced down at the papers on the table again. “Now then, Mr. Foley…”
“Chance.”
She looked up at him again and again didn’t follow his request. “As I mentioned in my email, Logan and Adele took care of their children’s financial needs. Quinn and Finn have a trust fund that will cover whatever expenses are incurred while they’re growing up, including college, weddings, and anything else that might arise. You’ll receive a monthly stipend from that trust that will cover their day-to-day needs.”
Chance had been surprised when he’d read that in the email. But he’d also been relieved. His folks had had to skimp on a lot when he and Logan were growing up, and they’d often had to go without. He was glad that wouldn’t be the case for his niece and nephew.
“And your brother took your needs into consideration as well,” Poppy continued.
Chance couldn’t quite help the surprised sound that escaped him. He’d just never known his older brother to care about anyone but himself. Logan must have done a lot of growing up after he left town.
“You sound doubtful, Mr. Foley.”
“Chance.”
“Mr. Foley. But Logan and Adele wanted to ensure that the children and you have everything you need.” She slid a sheet of paper across the table toward him. “This is an assessment of the children’s trust fund. I’ll send an updated copy to you quarterly, since I and my firm are the children’s trustees.”
Instead of looking at the paper, Chance sat forward. “You personally are the children’s trustee?”
“Yes, though my firm will also be overseeing the administration of the trust. I’m not an estate attorney. I practice corporate law.”
“So if you personally are a trustee, did you know my brother?”
Another shadow of melancholy flashed over her green eyes. “Yes. But I knew his wife better. Adele was my cousin.”
“Oh. Wow,” Chance said. “I’m so sorry. Please accept my condolences for your loss, too.”
“Thank you.”
He wanted to ask if the two of them had been close, but he could tell just by looking at her that they had been. So he instead looked down at the trust statement. It pretty much went without saying that he’d never seen one before and had no idea what he was looking at, other than a lot of columns with words and numbers. Words like assets and liabilities and fund equity and numbers that had way more digits to the left of the decimal point than made sense.
“I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” he said.
She pulled herself out of her thoughts and went back to being the no-nonsense attorney from her emails. Well, except for the sticking-up hair and the smudged lipstick. And the fact that she felt less like a stranger than she had before.
“It’s what’s currently in the children’s trust. The rest of your brother’s estate will be in probate for now.” She passed another piece of paper across the table. “This is a list of your brother’s current assets outside the trust. Essentially, all of this will be added to the other funds at some point.”
Chance looked at those figures, too. Like the others, they were way too big to belong to a guy who’d left Endicott with nothing but a couple hundred bucks and a used Kawasaki.
He looked up at Poppy. “But this makes it look like Logan had hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.”
She held his gaze steady with those bottle green eyes, and something in the pit of Chance’s stomach caught fire. “That’s because, when he died, your brother had hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.”
Chance’s eyebrows shot up to nearly his hairline. “How did Logan come by hundreds of millions of dollars?”
“Logan was working for a tech firm in Boston when—”
“Wait, what?” he interrupted again. “Logan worked for a tech firm?”
Although his brother had taught himself to code when he was still in middle school, and he’d been a good hacker of the dirty tricks variety when they were teenagers, Chance couldn’t see him ever living the cubicle lifestyle for a steady paycheck.
“Yes,” Poppy said. “And he developed a computer program several years ago that allowed companies to legally plunder and sell all kinds of personal information and online habits of anyone who used their websites. It goes without saying that it was worth a gold mine to corporate America. And corporate America paid your brother a gold mine for it.”
Okay, that did actually sound like something Logan would have been able to do. Chance probably shouldn’t have been surprised that his brother would turn his gift for hacking into making a pile of money.
Poppy pulled another piece of paper from the collection in front of her. “I have another statement that’s been prepared for your trust, Mr. Foley.”
He started to correct Poppy’s Mr. Foley again, but the other part of her statement sunk in too quickly. “What do you mean my trust?”
“I mean your brother and sister-in-law have put funds into a trust for you, as well.”
He didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing, only gazed back at Poppy, confused as hell.
When he said nothing, she continued, “The children’s trust will begin to gradually revert to them when they reach the age of twenty-two. That’s when the funds in your trust will revert entirely to you.”
Out of nowhere, a thought popped up in the back of Chance’s brain, and he was reminded of something he hadn’t thought about for a long time—a wish he’d made to a comet when he was fifteen years old. A wish, legend said, that should be coming true about now, since Endicott had been celebrating the Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival for a few weeks. Something cool and unpleasant wedged in his throat at the memory.
He eyed Poppy warily. “H-how much money is in that trust?”
Her serious green eyes had never looked more serious. “A million dollars, Mr. Foley. Once the children have reached the age of twenty-two, that million dollars will be yours.”
“Says you. The food is awesome.”
“Holy crow, who paints a ceiling like that?”
Fifteen-year-old Chance Foley tugged at his necktie for the billionth time and gazed at his three companions sitting on the other side of the table at the Galaxy Ball. His brother, Logan, had naturally been the one to complain, because Logan, at nineteen, complained about everything and thought he was better than everyone else. Certainly better than the three fifteen-year-olds their mother had made him promise to keep an eye on tonight. Chance’s friend Felix Suarez was shoveling his dessert into his mouth like it was the last bite of food he’d ever get, even though he lived above his grandmother’s restaurant. And his other friend Max Travers, whose hand-me-down suit fitted him even worse than Logan’s hand-me-down fitted Chance, was staring fascinated at the high ceiling overhead.
Chance looked up, too. Max had a point. Although the whole ballroom of Mrs. Pendleton Barclay’s estate was pretty gnarly, the ceiling was super trippy. Bright blue and dotted with stars, there was a giant sun and moon in the middle surrounded by cartoon renditions of all the planets. And streaking through the middle of them was a comet. Comet Bob. It actually had a more official handle, the name of the Eastern European scientist who discovered him, but that name had more consonants than vowels and more syllables than anyone was comfortable with, so Comet Bob it was.
It was the whole reason for the party tonight. Mrs. Barclay’s Galaxy Ball was the final event of the month-long Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival that the small southern Indiana town of Endicott hosted every fifteen years. Comet Bob came back to Earth every fifteen years, always during the third week of September, and he always made his closest pass to the planet at coordinates that were directly above Endicott. It was an anomaly scientists had been trying to explain for generations, but meanwhile the little town had come to claim it as their own.
“I think the ceiling’s dope,” Chance said. “It would be cool to live in a place like this.”
Not that it would ever be in the cards for the Foleys. His dad had been killed by a drunk driver when Chance was twelve, and his mother was newly recovered from a bout with cancer that had dumped the family into medical debt they weren’t likely to ever crawl out from under. But Chance didn’t care about the money. He was just glad his mom was okay. Hell, if he had to work his part-time job at the boatyard for the rest of his life to help pay off her medical bills, he would.
“Mrs. Barclay is such a weirdo,” Logan said.
“I think she’s nice,” Chance told him. “Not many rich old ladies would invite a bunch of fifteen-year-olds to a house like this.”
Then again, Chance and his friends—and all the other fifteen-year-olds at the party tonight—weren’t just any fifteen-year-olds. They’d all been born the last year Bob came around. In Endicott, you didn’t get much more prestige than being born in a year of the comet. Too bad it didn’t bring riches, too.
It could, though. Maybe. A lot of folklore had risen up around Comet Bob over the years. Like the bit about making wishes. Legend had it that if someone in Endicott was born in a year of the comet, and if that person made a wish when Bob came back, then that wish would come true when Bob returned next time. So late last night, when the comet was directly overhead, Chance had sent his wish skyward—a wish for a million dollars. He didn’t care if it took fifteen years for it to come true. His mom would have barely made a dent in her medical bills by then. A million bucks, he was sure, could pay off whatever was left. Then he and his mom and his brother could put the whole terrible ordeal of her illness behind them forever.
“Hey, did you guys make a wish last night?” he asked his friends. “I did.”
His friends exchanged an anxious glance.
“Um, yeah. Okay. I guess I did, too,” Felix confessed.
Max exhaled a defeated sound. “All right. Fine. I did, too.”
“Wishes?” Logan asked incredulously. “You guys actually made wishes when Bob passed overhead?”
“Shh,” Max shot back. “Will you please keep it down? The wishes may not come true if other people hear, even if we were all born in the last year of the comet.”
Logan shook his head at the three younger guys. “Incredible. Just what the hell did you wish for?”
Max dropped his glance to his lap. “I wished Marcy Hanlon would see me as something other than the lawn boy.”
Chance bit back a smile. The worst kept secret at Endicott High School was Max’s unrequited love for Marcy, whose family was so rich and so much higher on the social ladder than practically anyone in Indiana he might as well have been pining for a Greek goddess. Good luck filling that wish, Bob.
“I wished for a million dollars,” Chance offered readily. He didn’t care if anyone knew what he wished for. It was a legit request.
Felix added, “And I wished that, just once, something interesting would happen in this town.”
Oh, sure. That was even less likely to happen than Marcy Hanlon seeing Max as something other than the lawn boy. Comet festivals aside, nothing interesting ever happened in Endicott.
Chance was about to say something else, but a blonde lady at the next table suddenly turned around and smiled at them. “Be careful what you wish for, boys,” she said. She took the hand of the dark-haired man sitting beside her. “Because you know…you might just get it.”
They both smiled as they stood up and walked toward the ballroom exit. For some reason, as he watched them go, Chance couldn’t quite shake the idea that whoever the lady was, she was a comet kid, too, and Bob had done right by her this year and granted her wish.
It was a good sign. Maybe in fifteen years he really would have a million bucks dropped into his lap. Maybe, somehow, the next time Bob came around, he really would make Chance’s wish come true.
Chapter One
Fifteen years later
Chance Foley concentrated hard on unclenching his fists, breathing slowly and reminding himself again that 10:00 a.m. was too early in the day to start drinking. September was turning out to be one hell of a month, and it was barely half over.
It had started on day one, when his beloved vintage Jeep Cherokee rolled into the Ohio River while he and his friend Max were trying to secure his other friend Felix’s boat onto its trailer. But the news he’d received three days ago had topped even that. He’d learned that his brother, Logan, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from for more than a decade, had died—along with a wife Chance never knew he had—in a freak avalanche while snowboarding in Austria.
One of the many things troubling him at the moment was the realization that he was probably going to miss his Jeep more than he was going to miss his brother. Even before he and Logan had become estranged, they’d never been especially close. That was partly due to the four-year gap in their ages, but also due to the fact that Logan had grown into a typically self-absorbed teenager and never really considered his little brother to be much more than a pest. The only thing Chance knew for sure right now was that Logan and his wife, Adele, had left behind two little kids, six-year-old twins Chance had never known about, either.
Six-year-old twins who were about to become his wards.
“Mr. Foley?”
Chance snapped up his head to look at the tidy, buttoned-down man sitting behind the reception desk of Novak and Hamza, attorneys-at-law. Lionel Abernathy—he’d introduced himself upon Chance’s arrival earlier. And never in his life had Chance met someone whose name seemed to match his demeanor more perfectly.
“Yes?” Chance replied.
“I’m sorry for your wait. Ms. Digby just texted. She’s on her way now and should be here anytime with the children.”
The Ms. Digby Lionel was referring to was a Boston attorney who would be meeting with Chance this morning to introduce him to his niece and nephew and go over the particulars of his brother’s will.
“Thanks,” Chance replied.
Lionel hesitated. “I take it you haven’t met them yet?”
Chance shook his head. “No. Ms. Digby said they’d be getting in too late yesterday to arrange a meeting. Have you met them?”
The receptionist nodded. “I picked them up at the airport in Louisville last night to drop off a company car for Ms. Digby to use while she’s here in Endicott. The children are, um, they’re just, ah, just delightful.”
The way he stumbled over the last word gave Chance pause. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Lionel hastily offered, “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Bottle of water?”
Chance shook his head. “No. Thanks. I’m good.”
“I’m sure Ms. Digby will only be a few more minutes.” He threw Chance a thin smile, then went back to his work.
Chance ran both hands through his dark hair and leaned back in his chair. He wished he’d had time for a haircut—he was long overdue—and he felt weirdly overdressed in simple khakis and a white oxford shirt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn these clothes. But they were the dressiest he owned, and he’d felt like he needed to make the best impression possible. His only interaction with Poppy Digby so far had been through emails, and in those she hadn’t sounded anywhere near as fun and lighthearted as her name would suggest. She’d been matter-of-fact and straight-to-the-point about everything, using the sort of language that was probably supposed to be comforting—but not really—and doing her best to be reassuring—which she didn’t quite manage.
The dichotomy between her bubbly name and her sober email demeanor had made Chance curious enough to google her. But that hadn’t helped at all, because in every picture he’d seen of her, she looked like a pinstriped pixie, something that just added to the puzzle. Her bio on the website of the Boston law firm where she worked had been even less helpful, telling him little more about her than her educational and professional credentials. Which, yeah, were impressive, but they still didn’t seem to suit her. Not a word about her interests or what she might do for entertainment, which were normally included in a lot of professional profiles. Unless maybe the part about how she spent her spare time reading biographies of economists and pursuing an interest in cacti was supposed to cover that.
All Chance knew for sure about her was that she was bringing his niece and nephew, Quinn and Finn—Seriously, Logan? You had to give them names like that?—to her firm’s sister law office here in Endicott, and they’d be arriving this morning at 9:30 a.m. sharp. That had been twenty-five minutes ago. Tardiness was another thing that didn’t seem to fit Poppy Digby. It only added to the surreal quality of his own life at the moment.
Two kids. Chance was going to be responsible for raising two kids. What the hell had Logan and his wife been thinking to name him as their preferred choice of guardian for their children? There had to have been dozens of people in their current lives who would be more familiar to the kids and better prepared to take on a task like that.
It was hard to not be angry at his brother for not telling him. For six years, Chance could have been the fun uncle, mailing off Christmas gifts and cash-stuffed birthday cards to the next generation of Foleys. Having the kids visit every summer to get to know them better, or flying up to Boston himself once in a while to let them show him their favorite places to visit in their hometown.
But no. Logan had left Endicott to make his way in the world when Chance was sixteen, barely a week after they buried their mother. It evidently never occurred to him that leaving behind a minor brother might be a bit problematic for said minor brother. Chance had spent the next year and a half couch surfing with Felix and Max, whose families had been kind enough to take him in, until he could sign a lease on his own place when he turned eighteen. Life hadn’t exactly gotten easier after that, but he’d had a good job at the boatyard and a gift for carpentry, inherited from his father, that had led to his learning the craft of boatbuilding. Not that there was a lot of that going on these days, but there was enough, along with the more regular income from his marine repair shop, for him to keep himself fed and clothed and housed and still put a little away every month for the future.
Of course, now he was going to have two more people to feed and clothe and house. Quinn and Finn. Seriously, Logan? Seriously? Two people he knew nothing about and who in turn knew nothing of him. Two people he was going to be responsible for for the next god knew how many years. He’d have to enroll them in school and become a member of the PTA. Cook regular nutritious meals for them. Keep tabs on what they watched on TV and what games they played and make sure they were home before dark.
Was Quinn a typical little girl? Did she like glitter and unicorns and all things pink? Or was she more into bugs and skateboards and mud pies? Maybe Finn was the one into glitter and unicorns and all things pink. Maybe neither of them was. Maybe they were both empty vessels hungry for knowledge. In which case, Chance was really in trouble, because pretty much the only thing he knew about was boats.
He heard a door open and close somewhere down the hall, followed by the heavy clack-clack-clack of sensible heels and the softer scuff of rubber-soled sneakers. Ms. Digby and the children had arrived.
The knot in his stomach clenched tighter. He heard another door open and close, the mumble of voices both old and young, and then the law office was silent again. Until a moment later when, out of nowhere, a high-pitched scream split the air of the reception room, followed immediately by the crash of something that sounded really, really expensive. Lionel heard it, too, his previously polite expression rocketing to panic.
“What was that?” Chance asked.
“I guess I should go check,” Lionel replied.
He stood and strode down a hallway to his left. Chance heard a door open again, then another scream—this one less high pitched and more wild-animal sounding—followed by the thump of what could have been a baseball, a book, or a body part.
“Ms. Digby!” The receptionist cried out in a way that sounded so, so not good. “That was Ms. Novak’s Vander Award! It’s Baccarat crystal!”
“Lionel,” Ms. Digby replied in a voice Chance could tell she was struggling to keep even. “Do you mind keeping an eye on the children for a few minutes while I talk to Mr. Foley?”
Lionel muttered something in a strangled voice that sounded a lot like, Are you out of your effing mind?
Whoa, Lionel, WTF? There are children present. You seemed so professional. Not cool, dude.
“Give Finn your phone,” Chance heard Ms. Digby tell Lionel.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“The children’s devices were all packed by mistake,” Ms. Digby explained, “and they become distracted easily. I assume you have some sort of app on your phone that will keep Finn occupied. Quinn has very much enjoyed What’s That Cactus? on mine.”
“No,” Lionel said decisively.
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
That seemed to give Lionel pause. “What kind?”
“Whatever kind you want.”
Lionel immediately named one in the two-thousand-dollar range. Chance knew that because he’d recently priced new phones for himself and had laughed himself silly when he saw the cost of that model.
That didn’t seem to deter Ms. Digby, however. “Done. Now give Finn your phone. Quinn already has mine.”
Chance heard her clack a few steps toward the waiting room, then she stopped. “And, Lionel.”
“Yes, Ms. Digby?”
“Do not take your eyes off those children for a moment.”
Chance told himself he only imagined an audible gulp from the receptionist. “Yes, Ms. Digby.”
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. Ms. Digby entered the reception room in a way that might have been imperious had it not been for her appearance. She was in fact wearing pinstripes—a slender skirt and double-breasted jacket in no-nonsense navy—but the former was splattered with what looked like the better part of a milkshake, and the latter was hanging haphazardly open over a wrinkled blouse and crooked string of pearls. Her short dark hair, so perfectly styled in the photos he’d seen, was sticking straight up in a couple of places, and her round tortoiseshell glasses were askew.
She managed to straighten those glasses—mostly—as she approached, her gaze steady and confident when it met his, her eyes the clearest pale green Chance had ever seen. Green, too, was a splotch of something on her chin, just below her slightly smudged red lipstick. He’d been with Max often enough when the other man ordered one of those matcha drinks at Julie’s Java Joint to suspect it was a remnant of one of those.
“Mr. Foley,” she said as she switched a leather briefcase from her right hand to her left and extended the former confidently toward him. Automatically, Chance shook it. She had a solid grip, he’d give her that. “Please accept my condolences for the loss of your brother and sister-in-law.”
“Thanks,” he replied automatically. Her voice was as intriguing as the rest of her, deep and kind of husky for a woman, especially one her size. Which, even wearing sensible heels, was a good six inches shy of Chance’s six-one.
“I know you’re anxious to meet your niece and nephew,” she continued, “but it would be helpful if you and I could have a moment to speak in private first about your brother and sister-in-law’s wishes.”
“Okay,” he said. Truth be told, he didn’t mind stalling for a little while longer. He was still kind of, oh, terrified about the prospect of becoming a guardian.
“If you’ll follow me?”
She was turning around before she finished to head down a hallway opposite the one from which she’d come. Because it was a Sunday, the offices were empty. Lionel had probably only come in to unlock the place for Ms. Digby.
She led Chance to a room that was plain and functional, a run-of-the-mill meeting room as opposed to someone’s office. A long table bisected the space with a dozen chairs surrounding it. She took a seat near the head, gestured at the one across from her for Chance, then slung her briefcase up on the table.
He sat down, and as she withdrew some documents from her bag and began to sort through them, he looked out the bank of windows behind her. The Old Town part of Endicott, where the law office was located, sat on a hill that looked out over the Ohio and an especially green part of Kentucky on the other side. It was a gorgeous day, the sky blue and clear, a soft breeze rippling the trees. Between the law office and the river, the town descended into tidy homes along tree-lined streets, then to a good-sized marina where all manner of watercraft bobbed and tugged at their moorings. Even more boats dotted the river beyond. On any other Sunday like this, Chance would have been right out there with them in the vintage runabout he’d rebuilt from near scratch. There was nothing he loved more than being on the water.
“Now then, Mr. Foley—”
“Call me Chance,” he interrupted gently. He was never comfortable when people called him Mr. Foley more than once.
Ms. Digby—Poppy, he corrected himself, since he didn’t like using honorifics for other people, either—looked like she wanted to call him Mr. Foley even more emphatically.
“How much do you know about your brother’s situation?” she asked.
“Only what I was told by the cops who showed up at my door a few days ago to tell me about the accident and what you told me in your emails after that.”
She nodded. “And you mentioned you didn’t even know he was married with children.”
“No, I didn’t even know where he was before you contacted me about his will. And the part about him having a will—not to mention including me in it—almost surprised me more than the part about him having a family.”
“Why would that surprise you?”
“Because neither of us is…was…the planning type. No one in my family was. We never had enough to worry about the future.”
“Don’t you have a will now?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s never seemed necessary.”
“Don’t you want to provide for your loved ones after you’re gone?”
“I don’t have any loved ones to provide for,” he said simply.
Her expression changed, and it made something inside Chance twist tight. It had been a long time since anyone had felt sad for him. That a total stranger would be now… Well, it made Poppy Digby seem like a lot less of a stranger.
“I guess now that I’ll be caring for Quinn and Finn, I should get a will made up,” he said.
She nodded. “I can arrange for someone here at Novak and Hamza to contact you.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She glanced down at the papers on the table again. “Now then, Mr. Foley…”
“Chance.”
She looked up at him again and again didn’t follow his request. “As I mentioned in my email, Logan and Adele took care of their children’s financial needs. Quinn and Finn have a trust fund that will cover whatever expenses are incurred while they’re growing up, including college, weddings, and anything else that might arise. You’ll receive a monthly stipend from that trust that will cover their day-to-day needs.”
Chance had been surprised when he’d read that in the email. But he’d also been relieved. His folks had had to skimp on a lot when he and Logan were growing up, and they’d often had to go without. He was glad that wouldn’t be the case for his niece and nephew.
“And your brother took your needs into consideration as well,” Poppy continued.
Chance couldn’t quite help the surprised sound that escaped him. He’d just never known his older brother to care about anyone but himself. Logan must have done a lot of growing up after he left town.
“You sound doubtful, Mr. Foley.”
“Chance.”
“Mr. Foley. But Logan and Adele wanted to ensure that the children and you have everything you need.” She slid a sheet of paper across the table toward him. “This is an assessment of the children’s trust fund. I’ll send an updated copy to you quarterly, since I and my firm are the children’s trustees.”
Instead of looking at the paper, Chance sat forward. “You personally are the children’s trustee?”
“Yes, though my firm will also be overseeing the administration of the trust. I’m not an estate attorney. I practice corporate law.”
“So if you personally are a trustee, did you know my brother?”
Another shadow of melancholy flashed over her green eyes. “Yes. But I knew his wife better. Adele was my cousin.”
“Oh. Wow,” Chance said. “I’m so sorry. Please accept my condolences for your loss, too.”
“Thank you.”
He wanted to ask if the two of them had been close, but he could tell just by looking at her that they had been. So he instead looked down at the trust statement. It pretty much went without saying that he’d never seen one before and had no idea what he was looking at, other than a lot of columns with words and numbers. Words like assets and liabilities and fund equity and numbers that had way more digits to the left of the decimal point than made sense.
“I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” he said.
She pulled herself out of her thoughts and went back to being the no-nonsense attorney from her emails. Well, except for the sticking-up hair and the smudged lipstick. And the fact that she felt less like a stranger than she had before.
“It’s what’s currently in the children’s trust. The rest of your brother’s estate will be in probate for now.” She passed another piece of paper across the table. “This is a list of your brother’s current assets outside the trust. Essentially, all of this will be added to the other funds at some point.”
Chance looked at those figures, too. Like the others, they were way too big to belong to a guy who’d left Endicott with nothing but a couple hundred bucks and a used Kawasaki.
He looked up at Poppy. “But this makes it look like Logan had hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.”
She held his gaze steady with those bottle green eyes, and something in the pit of Chance’s stomach caught fire. “That’s because, when he died, your brother had hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.”
Chance’s eyebrows shot up to nearly his hairline. “How did Logan come by hundreds of millions of dollars?”
“Logan was working for a tech firm in Boston when—”
“Wait, what?” he interrupted again. “Logan worked for a tech firm?”
Although his brother had taught himself to code when he was still in middle school, and he’d been a good hacker of the dirty tricks variety when they were teenagers, Chance couldn’t see him ever living the cubicle lifestyle for a steady paycheck.
“Yes,” Poppy said. “And he developed a computer program several years ago that allowed companies to legally plunder and sell all kinds of personal information and online habits of anyone who used their websites. It goes without saying that it was worth a gold mine to corporate America. And corporate America paid your brother a gold mine for it.”
Okay, that did actually sound like something Logan would have been able to do. Chance probably shouldn’t have been surprised that his brother would turn his gift for hacking into making a pile of money.
Poppy pulled another piece of paper from the collection in front of her. “I have another statement that’s been prepared for your trust, Mr. Foley.”
He started to correct Poppy’s Mr. Foley again, but the other part of her statement sunk in too quickly. “What do you mean my trust?”
“I mean your brother and sister-in-law have put funds into a trust for you, as well.”
He didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing, only gazed back at Poppy, confused as hell.
When he said nothing, she continued, “The children’s trust will begin to gradually revert to them when they reach the age of twenty-two. That’s when the funds in your trust will revert entirely to you.”
Out of nowhere, a thought popped up in the back of Chance’s brain, and he was reminded of something he hadn’t thought about for a long time—a wish he’d made to a comet when he was fifteen years old. A wish, legend said, that should be coming true about now, since Endicott had been celebrating the Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival for a few weeks. Something cool and unpleasant wedged in his throat at the memory.
He eyed Poppy warily. “H-how much money is in that trust?”
Her serious green eyes had never looked more serious. “A million dollars, Mr. Foley. Once the children have reached the age of twenty-two, that million dollars will be yours.”