A Chance Inheritance


 
 
 
 
 
 
 A Chance Inheritance © 2021, 2023 by Carolyn Brown
 Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
 Cover design by Elsie Lyons
 Cover images © Agnes Kantaruk/Shutterstock
 Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—­except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—­without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
 The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
 All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
 Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
 P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-­4410
 (630) 961-­3900
 sourcebooks.com
 A Chance Inheritance was originally published in 2021 by Audible Originals.
 
 
 Contents
 Front Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Excerpt from The Next Best Day
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Back Cover
 
 
 To my friend, 
 Sharon Sala
 
 
 Chapter 1
 Lainie Cornell was a real runaway bride. She had crawled out the window of the country club, gotten into her car, and driven all the way from Dallas to Houston before she stopped and finally answered her father’s call.
 She had no doubts that she was doing the right thing. When it came right down to it, she didn’t love Eli, and she hated the way he tried to dominate her. But to wait until the minute she was to walk down the aisle was unforgivable. She knew that.
 Her two cousins, Becky and Jodi, had been her bridesmaids, and they had already made their way down the aisle to the front of the church when Lainie decided to run.
 She promised herself that she would call each of them and apologize for embarrassing them so badly, but not until a couple of days had passed. It would take that long for Becky to stop cussing loud enough to melt the stained-­glass windows in the church. Jodi would be angry for maybe the rest of the day and a night, but then she would understand, or at least Lainie thought she would. No doubt about it though, today was not the time to try to explain why she had taken off to any of them.
 She checked into the cheap, no-­tell motel still wearing her wedding dress, but she had tossed the veil and bouquet out the window somewhere south of Waco.
 She answered the twentieth—­or was it the twenty-­fifth?—­call from her father.
 “Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I just couldn’t marry Eli even if—­”
 When her father was angry, he whispered. She could barely hear him when he said, “Wherever you are, you have responsibilities, so get your ass home.”
 “I’ve got to get things sorted out,” she said. “I’ll come back to Dallas when I—­”
 “You will come back right now,” her father butted in before she could finish.
 She ended the call and turned off her phone for two days. When she turned it back on, she had four missed calls and two voicemail messages from her cousin Becky telling her that Granny Lizzie’s will had been read and that Lainie had inherited one-­third of both the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut and Granny Lizzie’s house, which was located right beside it. She dried her eyes, forced herself to stop crying, and called Becky.
 Lainie told her cousin she’d be there before supper, and then she took a quick shower, got dressed in jeans and a T-­shirt, and picked up the garment bag holding her wedding dress and took it out to her car first. The thing filled the whole back seat. She didn’t ever plan on wearing it again, but she just couldn’t leave it behind. She went back inside her dingy little room and hauled out her two hot-­pink suitcases, which contained everything she needed for a honeymoon in the Colorado mountains. The third trip back into the room was just to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind.
 Before she left, she checked her reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Her black hair still had droplets of water hanging on her ponytail, and her green eyes had dark circles around them. She should stop by Dallas and try to explain how she felt to Eli, but her hands trembled at the thought of facing him.
 “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter if I look like crap. I’m going to Catfish, Texas, to work in a bait shop. I’m not having dinner tonight with the queen, not even if Becky acts like she is royalty.” She left the room key on the nightstand and locked the door behind her, got into her little red sports car, and headed north toward the Red River.
 “I love you, Granny Lizzie,” Lainie sobbed as she drove. “Why did you have to die right before my wedding? I needed you to be there to tell me that marriage was tough enough when a woman loves a man, and impossible if she doesn’t.”
 I was there in spirit, and I think you got the message. The voice in Lainie’s head was as clear as if her grandmother had been sitting right beside her.
 She didn’t like the idea of working in the Catfish Fisherman’s Hut or living with her two older, bossy cousins, but that was better than going back to Dallas. She hadn’t even gotten out of Houston when the phone rang. She sucked in a lungful of air and hit the accept button.
 “Hello, Daddy,” she said. “I’m on my way to Granny Lizzie’s place. She’s