Second Ave Offices: Labor Day (WLW)

A Stake in Life

Rose set her level along the wall and took her carpenter's pencil from her utility belt, marking where the last of the built in shelving units for her latest contract would be placed, then stepped back. "So, as you can see, the shelves will be on this wall here and that of the opposing as we discussed and will be able to hold around a hundred pounds each. They will be solid oak and I made sure that their installment won't compromise your home's structure. When finished, I can move on to the bathroom work, but for that I'll need to bring in my team and it might get a bit loud."

"No problem." Her client replied as the front doorbell chimed. Zachary walked backwards out of the room as he finished with, "I trust you to do the work on your own."

He disappeared through the door to the room and Rose was once again left with her thoughts as she got to work, hoisting her electric saw from its hard case. As she made sure her goggles, hard hat and mask were all stable, her mind wandered to other places as it tended to do when working. She did everything by muscle memory at this point and with her thoughts so filled with her current litigations, she found herself doing so more often than not. She got to work after securing her ear plugs and recalled her meeting with her mother's attorney the day prior.

Bex was beyond exasperating. She was downright obnoxious and the fact that she was aiming for more than she deserved from her late husband, whom she never truly loved, was infuriating. Her first proposal was just icing on the cake and Rose felt herself huff as she thought of it. How dare she? The only reason she remained with Rose's father was because of his money and even in the wake of his death she was looking for more. Rose didn't mind her siblings having a share of the funds, but it had almost killed her to offer the same to Bex.

Still, she'd put her best foot forward and done so in the most equally beneficial way possible and even that was met with confrontation. On top of that, Lucas desired absolutely no money and that worried Rose. With his recent diagnosis and her father showing symptoms when he was around forty, she knew he had maybe twenty good years ahead of him before things got bad. She wanted to make sure those years were easy for him, but if he didn't accept the money, then how was she to make sure that happened?

Perhaps she could secretly pay for his college fees and he would just assume it was an anonymous donation? People do that all the time right? Rose thought as she sawed into the wall, following the straight line she tethered to it to keep her unit level on all sides. She kept cutting as her mind reeled with how she could secretly support him and possibly even their middle sister if she played her cards right. The only issue was that she would stop at nothing to make sure Bex never got her hands on their shares as she was sure if she granted them the money, she would fight them tooth and nail for control of their funds until they finished university.

That was not happening...

Rose had a hard enough time offering her twenty-five percent of everything. There was no way she'd be allowing more. As her mind kept drifting further and further into the case, she thought of the person presiding over her side and felt a smirk grace her lips. It felt nice. Light and easy, much like the witty way her lawyer seemed to reply to all of Rose's jests. Maya was quite peculiar and another source of where Rose's mind wondered regularly.

She couldn't get her out of her mind, though she knew nothing could really happen between them. Still, the conversation and the tranquility brought about by Maya's presence was rather entrenching, quickly burying her in a world wherein the curious woman sat epicenter. Rose finished her cuts and unplugged her saw, then set it back into its case after detaching the blade. She placed the sharp, round disk onto a towel to clean before packing it away and grabbed her claw hammer.

Just as she brought it to the wall to pull the sheetrock away, a throat cleared from behind herself and she peeked over her shoulder. There stood none other than Maya and Rose felt her eyes bulge, prompting her lawyer to grin.