Out to Lunch Read Online Free PDF Page A

along.
    “So, Jenna, I think you know that you’re the executor of Aimee’s estate.”
    “She told me she was going to set that up.”
    “She did. And the good news is that mostly, it is very uncomplicated and straightforward. I know you already know about her bequests for her family. Her remaining shares in Peerless SBE revert to you, so you now vote those shares in combination with your own as a larger partner. She has also left you her handbags, jewelry, and other personal effects to keep what you want, and distribute the rest to her sisters-in-law and nieces. She has made small cash gifts for all of the employees of The Larder Library, and has bequeathed ownership of the Lincoln Square apartment she rented to your employee Benjamin to him outright. The house, and its contents, as well as the rest of the money, the life insurance payout, all go to Wayne.”
    Hallelujah. No sculpture abomination for me! Dodged a bullet on that one. And I get both of her Birkin bags, the big chocolate brown one and the smaller taupe one, which I have to admit I’ve always coveted. Of course I don’t really have anywhere to carry them, but that is beside the point. They are so much better than neon artwork.
    “But . . .”
    Oh crap on a cracker. There’s a but.
    “The way she set up Wayne’s portion of the estate is a little bit unusual.”
    And suddenly, looking at his uber-Grant (Cary meets Hugh) face, with its furrowed brow, and such kindness in his impossibly teal blue eyes, something tells me that
unusual
is code for
you’re utterly fucked.

3

    T he letter is on heavy cream cotton paper, with Aimee’s beautiful, rounded, swirly handwriting in charcoal gray ink, one of her signatures. Aimee was a fountain pen girl from the minute we got to college. Part of her transformation from rural Indiana cheerleader to elegant city sophisticate. I’ve read the letter six times since Brian gave it to me yesterday.
    Jenna,
    Well, isn’t this just a huge bucket of suck? I’m so sorry to have gone off and left you, and in such a terrible, ugly way. Awfully inelegant of me, I know. We were supposed to grow old (but never gray!) together. We were supposed to take amazing vacations and have indulgent spa weekends, and if you had left me like this I would be so fucking angry with you that I would be red-faced and impossible forever.
    Since you’re already mad at me, I’m going to do something that will make you even madder. And no, I’m not giving you that sculpture from Miami that you hate so much.
    I’m giving you custody of Wayne.
    If I’d had kids of my own, you’d have been their fairy godmother, and I’d have needed you to be there for them, to be their memory of me, and go all
Beaches
for me. I just have Wayne, and I need you to take care of him for me. I know that you never really understood him or liked him very much or got why I loved him, and that we never talked about it. On the one hand, I’m so grateful that you never made me defend him, you were never snarky or eye-rolly about him and you never once said “What the hell were you thinking?” even though I know you thought it more than once.
    And on the other hand, I wish that during my life you could have gotten to know him enough that you would have never even thought that to begin with. I always thought we’d have plenty of time to talk about it, or that one day it would just click and that would be that. But then this stupid thing happened and there were just no words and no time.
    Here’s all you need to know. I loved him with all my heart. He made me laugh every day, and I could always be completely myself with him. He was the best man I ever knew, after my dad, and my deepest wish for you is that someday you will find someone with whom you can have a love affair like I had with Wayne. We were real and powerful and deep and true, as real and powerful and deep and true as you and me, and it’s time for you to start to comprehend that. He needs you now, and