Where There's a Will Read Online Free Page A

outbreak of anything like that, God forbid, we’d know for certain exactly which animals had or hadn’t come in contact with the diseased ones. And after the initial cost, it wouldn’t be that much more than the barcoded tags and transponders we put on their ears now.”
    “ After the initial cost, yes,” she said dryly, clicking steadily away at the DELETE key. “Have you noticed that that always seems to be the catch?”
    “Well, you can’t very well make money if you don’t-”
    “Spend money,” she said, reaching for her cup. “Oh, look, here’s an actual message from a live person, someone we know, imagine that! It’s a note from Inge. It’s to all of you.” She scanned it, sipping her coffee. “Oh, my,” she said, looking up. “It looks like they’ve found your Uncle Magnus.”
    “They what? ” He got up to come and peer over her shoulder at the message, leaning close and adjusting his glasses to see it better. “Holy moley,” he said quietly. “Well, that would explain why we never heard from him. He never got where he was going. The plane went down.”
    “But how would they know it’s his plane?”
    “The registration number, I suppose. It’s on the fuselage.”
    “Do you think it’s really Magnus? The bones, I mean. It’s kind of gruesome.”
    Axel shrugged. “I don’t know who else it would be, assuming they’ve got the right plane.”
    “So what’s next? What are you all going to do? Do you bring the bones back?”
    With another shrug he turned away. “Now how would I know that? I’m guessing that’s what the meeting is for.”
    “What are you getting mad at me about?”
    “Ah, I’m not… I’m just…” He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Malani. I guess it’s just kind of a shock. The thing is, we just finished reliving that whole miserable business when they finally declared him legally dead, and now-”
    “That was three years ago.”
    “It was?” He blew out his cheeks. “Yes, I guess it was, at that.”
    “Time does fly when you’re having fun.”
    Axel tried but wasn’t quite able to smile in return. “I sure thought that was the end of it, didn’t you?” he said, shaking his head. “And now this. It seems like we just can’t put it behind us.”
    Malani held out her mug for him to refill. “Look at the bright side,” she said. “At least this means we now know for sure he’s not going to show up someday and say, ‘Hey, there, you people, I’m still alive, I’m not dead, and I want my property back.’ I always wondered about that, you know-about what would happen with the will if he turned out to not be dead after all. Would we have to give up the ranch?”
    “I know. I used to worry about that, too. He was a funny guy. With Magnus, you never knew.” He sipped meditatively at his coffee, thoughts of retinal scanning gone from his mind. “God, I wonder how Hedwig is going to react to this.”
    “Why Hedwig in particular?”
    “Well, you know Hedwig. She’s going to think this is bad karma.”
    Malani laughed. “To Hedwig, what isn’t?”
    She went back to scanning the junk mail. “Here’s one for you,” she said. “Are you interested in having your john-son enlarged?”
    That did bring a smile. “I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me.”
    Malani thought for a moment. “Couldn’t hurt,” she said.
    For some people, their roles in life-the personas they henceforth occupy, not always full-heartedly-are thrust upon them as children, as often as not by some casual or inadvertent happening. For Axel, the groundwork was laid when he was eight: a combination of protruding, weak eyes, bookish interests, and an oddly grown-up vocabulary, oddly delivered. The Torkelsson adults began to refer to him affectionately as “the little man,” and then, almost inevitably, as “the little professor.” And with that, the wheels of his life had been set in their ruts. Axel was, and would always be, the deep thinker