A Broke Waitress Inherited a $6 Train Depot — 12 Sealed Mail Cars Waited Behind the Wall
Chapter 1
Mara Ellis had six dollars and forty-three cents in her checking account when the lawyer called.
She was standing behind the counter of the Blue Lantern Diner, balancing three plates on one arm and trying not to burn herself on the coffee pot.
“Ms. Ellis?”
“Yes?”
“This is Jonathan Reed. I’m an attorney in Ashford County.”
Mara frowned.
“Did someone die?”
There was a pause.
“Yes.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Who?”
“Mr. Samuel Ellis.”
Mara stopped moving.
Her grandfather had been dead for almost twelve years.
“I think you have the wrong person.”
“I don’t.”
Mara looked toward the kitchen.
The line cook shouted for a refill.
Someone at table seven needed ketchup.
The world continued moving while Mara stood completely still.
“My grandfather died years ago.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Because his estate was never fully settled.”
The lawyer explained that Samuel had left behind one remaining property.
A train depot on the edge of a small rural town.
Mara almost laughed.
“How much is it worth?”
“That’s difficult to say.”
“Then why am I being told about it?”
“Because the legal transfer is unusually specific.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your grandfather requested that the property be transferred to you for a symbolic purchase price.”
Mara stared at the wall.
“How much?”
“Six dollars.”
She blinked.
“Six dollars?”
“Correct.”
Mara looked at the six crumpled dollars in her purse.
She almost laughed again.
“What am I inheriting for six dollars?”
The lawyer became quiet.
“A train depot.”
Mara knew exactly which one.
Everybody in town did.
Old Ashford Station had been abandoned for decades.
The roof leaked.
The windows were broken.
Grass grew through the platform.
People said rats lived in the waiting room.
No trains had stopped there in twenty years.
“Why would my grandfather leave that to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why didn’t he sell it?”
“I asked him the same question years ago.”
“And?”
“He told me one thing.”
Mara waited.
“He said, ‘Mara will know what to do when she finds the wall.'”
She dropped the coffee pot.
It shattered across the floor.
The entire diner turned toward her.
Mara barely noticed.
“What wall?”
The lawyer sighed.
“I was hoping you would ask me.”
Because somewhere inside a six-dollar abandoned train depot, her grandfather had apparently hidden something.
And Mara had a feeling whatever was behind that wall was the reason he had waited twelve years for her to inherit it.
