Devil's Pass Read Online Free Page B

fund an undertaking…or I should say, seven undertakings.” He paused. “This is without a doubt one of the most unusual clauses that I have ever been asked to put in a will.”
    He looked slowly from person to person. “I know you are all are anxious to hear about these undertakings. However, I cannot share them with all of you at this moment.”
    It seemed like everybody began shouting at once. Except for Webb. He just watched.
    â€œPlease, please!” Mr. Devine said, cutting through the noise. “You will all be fully informed, but not all of you will be informed at the same time. Some people will have to leave the room prior to the undertakings being read. Therefore, as per the terms of the will, I request that the grandsons—”
    â€œI’m not going anywhere,” Steve said. “I don’t want to be kicked out of the room.”
    â€œYou’ll go if you’re told to go,” his twin brother DJ said.
    Some things, Webb thought, never change.
    â€œYou don’t understand,” the lawyer said. “He can stay.”
    â€œIf he’s staying, then I’m staying as well,” DJ said.
    â€œAnd me too,” Webb said, speaking for the first time. He didn’t like attention, but there had been a time when he felt like he and his five cousins were a tribe. He would stand with them here too, if only for all the memories of how great life had been before his stepfather.
    The room erupted in noise again.
    â€œCould everybody please just stop!” Devine stood. “Please, I am reading a will. Decorum is needed. Out of respect for the deceased, you all need to follow his directions. Is that understood?”
    â€œSorry,” DJ said.
    â€œMe too,” Steve said.
    Devine began again. “Before I go on, I need to ask everybody to agree to respect the terms of his will— all the terms of his will.”
    â€œOf course we agree,” DJ’s mother said.
    Everyone else nodded in agreement.
    â€œExcellent,” the lawyer said. “Now I need to have everybody except for the six grandsons leave the room.”
    â€œWhat?” one of the adults said.
    â€œDid you say that the adults have to leave?” someone else asked.
    â€œYes. Everyone except the grandsons,” said Mr. Devine.

SIX
    NOW
    The jail cell smelled of vomit.
    While Webb didn’t want to get used to the smell, he was getting used to the changes in scenery. Three days earlier, he’d been in a lawyer’s office in a high-rise in Toronto, trying not to look at his mother. The day after that, he’d been in Phoenix, Arizona, facing a dry heat that sucked all traces of sweat off his skin. Yesterday, in Yellowknife, he’d been grounded because of fog.
    Naturally, it made him think of his grandpa and why Webb was here in Norman Wells. His grandpa had lived an entire lifetime of adventures.
    He’d loved to tell Webb about his exploits. When they’d gotten together to arrange the guitar loan, Webb had been with his grandpa for an entire glorious afternoon, lost in those stories, no different than when he’d been a little boy, loving the sound of his grandpa’s voice.
    Then, without warning, his grandpa had held Webb’s shoulders, looked him in the eye and said, “Life is difficult more often that it is not. To live means to face difficulties. It’s what you learn from those difficulties that matters. And Webby, I want you to remember what a German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche once said: ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger.’”
    It had been a quiet, serious moment. Then, like he did so often, his grandpa had given Webb a big grin, to relieve the seriousness of the moment.
    Still, Webb had wondered then and wondered since. Had his grandpa known what had turned him from an eleven-year-old boy who snuggled with his beagle every night into a seventeen-year-old who could turn away from his