The Nature of My Inheritance Read Online Free Page A

these for £60,000, which the conversion
chart made out to be about a hundred thousand
dollars just by itself. It went on like that. Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein in three small volumes
hidden in three different Bibles, the 1818 first
edition? Worth a hundred and a half, easy.
    But what on earth was my dad, the good reverend,
doing with Frankenstein when he
wouldn’t even let me and Drew see the movie
because he didn’t want our snow-pure souls corrupted
by the spectacle of a half-man, half-monster
roaming around terrorizing people and drowning little girls? Though he never found
out, we did see the James Whale original on a
friend’s computer, harmless enough moth-bait
relic that it was, but the more I thought about Frankenstein , Boethius, Machiavelli, and the rest,
the more I realized that my father and I couldn’t
be the only ones who knew about the pearls inside
these oysters. Couldn’t be blind to the fact
that his murder probably had to do with all this.
Problem was, if I talked to the detective about it,
I worried that the authorities might take my
books away from me. But if I didn’t, then whoever
pushed my dad down the stairs might never
get caught.
    Late morning on the third day of my convalescence—
where was Amanda Nightingale
when her fallen soldier needed succor?—the
telephone rang. This threw me way off, since the
house had been quiet as a toothache during the
first two days. I debated whether to answer. If I
did and it was my mother checking up on me,
she might say if I’m well enough to talk on the
phone I’m well enough to go to school. Ixnay to
that, since I needed at least one more day to finish
going through the Bibles. On the other hand,
what if it was that detective who maybe had a
lead or something? Damned if I did, damned if
I didn’t, so damn it I did.
    “Everett residence,” I half-croaked, in case it
was the mater.
    “Who’s this?” was what the man on the other
end asked.
    I’m not the epitome of etiquette, not by a
muddy mile, but that struck me as rude.
    “Who is this?” as breezy as I could muster
now that I knew it wasn’t my mother.
    “Is Reverend Everett there, please?”
    “This is his son. And who, may I ask, is calling?”
    Bread on the water, see.
    “I need to speak with the reverend himself,
I’m afraid, on a private matter. Would you mind
letting him know there’s a party on the phone
who wishes to speak with him?”
    Just as the decision whether or not to pick up
this call was a kind of crossroads, I found myself
at another crossroads here. Do I tell him about
my dad’s demise, or play out the line a little
more, see what this was about?
    “He’s not here right now. If you give me a
name and number—”
    And he hung up. Needless to say, as I continued
to work on cataloguing, and roughly, very
roughly, appraising the books inside the books
as best I could, recognizing my limitations and
at the same time continuing to marvel at the literary gems I unearthed, the dark cloud of that
call hung over me. Seldom the nervous type, except
in the presence of Amanda, whose mild
voice raised sweat on my palms and soft scent
made my heart race, every lousy sound I heard
downstairs, when the furnace boiler went on or
the hall clock struck the hour, caused me to
jump. I didn’t like that man on the horn. I didn’t
like that my father had left me with such a weird
legacy. I didn’t like it that my earlier little-boy
judgment about my dad’s death being a murder
had now transformed into my not-so-little-anymore
son’s conviction that I had been dead-on
right. I looked at the confounding array of
books, as many of them as worthless as the others
were valuable, and shook my head in wonder
and despair. If the reverend were here, as I very
much wished he were, he would no doubt have
had some catchy proverb to impart, some elegant
verse from the Bible that would bring this
mess into focus and help my suddenly incomprehensible
world make sense.
    “Where are you, man?