That night, Jak had a nightmare. The size of Calum’s estate had been so big that it took hours for the numbers to register. He’d gone from literally counting nickels and dimes to being a multi-millionaire. What caused the nightmare was the vision of his father exploding when he found out about his brother’s legacy and that Jak would be right there in the firing line and… The actions that his father would take terrified the life out of him.

Eventually, he put it to the back of his mind. Any encounter with his father was for the future. He had to concentrate on the here and now, the estate, meeting Calum’s daughter and then the big one, his challenge.

Jak arrived at the Solicitor’s offices a few minutes before two still thinking about the enormity of the task ahead.

“Hellooo again, Mr McGee. Mr Mackay will be free in a couple of minutes.”

“Thank you, Irene.”

“How was the B&B?”

He smiled.
“The bed was very comfortable, and the breakfast was huge. I didn’t need to stop for anything other than some coffee in… in the old town, I think that’s what you call it.”

“That is good. You are looking a lot more alert today.”

“I was rather tired yesterday, but today is another day and with another set of challenges.”

She chuckled.
“There speaks a ‘forever optimist’!”

Just then, a light on the small switchboard on her desk started to flash.

“Mr Mackay will see you now,” she said matter-of-factly.

Jak went towards the door of the office that he’d been in the previous day. As he approached, it opened to reveal the smiling face of Donald Mackay.

“Come on in. I have someone for you to meet.”

Feeling slightly bemused, Jak went inside, and Donald closed the door.

“Jak, this is Sa’ana or Sarah. She is Calum’s adopted daughter.”

The woman that Donald was talking about was not what he’d expected at all. For starters, she was black. A deep black skin emphasised her beauty. There was no doubt that she would turn heads wherever she went. A flawless complexion didn’t need much makeup to make her the most beautiful woman that Jak had ever seen, let alone met. Her huge lashes fluttered in his direction, making him go weak at the knees.

“He… Hello, Sarah,” he said stutteringly.

She smiled at him. Her perfect white teeth just made it worse for Jak.

“Pleased to meet you, Jak. Calum told me a lot about you.”

Her soft voice was like that of an enchantress to Jak.
“I thought that it might be good for the two of you to meet sooner rather than later. Calum wanted you to work together in the future.”

There had been nothing in the folder that Donald had given Jak the previous day about this. This was the moment that Jak began to understand that Calum’s affairs were far more complicated than he’d imagined when he boarded the flight to London.

“What sort of work would that be?”

Donald smiled.
“That is for the long term if Calum’s plans work out. In the meantime, Sarah will be here to help you with the challenge that he has set for you.”

Jak had been very, very, very deep in the closet regarding his desire to become a woman, apart from one day at the Boston Pride march and the three days he’d spent in New York the previous year at their pride event, where he didn’t dress up apart from wearing a rainbow shirt. He’d returned to Boston feeling both liberated and depressed. Liberated, in that people had just accepted him as who he was, and depressed because he’d have to return to hiding his true self again.

“Jak,” said Sarah,
“It will be fine, I promise you. Dad was very clear to me that you were in the closet, and if you are going to be a success as one of us, then we’d have to take it in small steps.”

Her soft voice was music to his ears.

“Jak, there is a lot to do before you can even think about starting to become the person you desire. For starters, there is the little matter of a visa. You can’t apply for it here, but we can provide you with all the information that you will need. Calum anticipated this, which is why Sarah is here,” said Donald.

“I… I don’t quite follow you?”

“You will need to apply for a work visa when you go back to the USA. For that, you will need a job to go to and as my number two and as the Managing Director of three companies in your own right, that will qualify you for the visa.”

“Ok, I am beginning to understand. Calum was prepared for almost everything.”

Sarah laughed.
“That’s an excellent description of Dad.”

Then she added,
“Dad wanted you to cut all ties to your father.”

Jak nodded.
“They aren’t very strong at the moment, but he keeps on trying to get me to go back home and work for him. The day after your letter about Calum arrived, there was another one from his legal team reminding me that I have a student debt that will need repaying.”

Donald shuffled some papers on his desk and handed Jak a sheet of paper.

“Is that approximately the amount that you owe in student debt?”

Jak looked at the figures. His dire financial position was laid bare for all to see.

“Yes. I need a job fast.”

“You can forget about the debt. Calum instructed us to pay it in full if you came here. No strings at all. You are here, so we can pay that off. Will that get your father off your back?”

Jak shook his head.
“He’ll want to know where the money comes from. He owns the bank where I got the loan from.”

Donald grinned.
“Do you play the lottery?”

Jak began to understand.
“Sometimes. I could say that I won a prize in the lottery and he’d have to accept it! Brilliant.”

Donald shook his head.
“Not me. Calum knows your father and left us the instructions on how to do it. We have an associate legal company that has offices in Boston and New York. We will wire the funds to them, and they’ll handle the transaction. If you visit their offices in Boston and become a client of theirs, then the rules of client confidentiality will come into play.”

He paused for a few seconds before saying,
“Actually, I think that you should become a client of the US Law Firm. They’ll handle the visa application paperwork. Because they work with us, we can supply them all the data they’ll need once you sign on as a client.”

Jak began to see just how different Calum was from his father. Calum really had left nothing to chance, from getting his affairs in order before going off trying to scale all those Munros to planning how to deal with Jak’s student debt. While that was good, it was going to be rather daunting trying to live up to his legacy.

“Jak,” said Sarah.
“Let’s get out of here. I’m cooking tonight, and I have a spare room that you can stay in until you go back home.”

Jak’s face dropped.
“I don’t have the money to get home. Or rather, get to Heathrow. I have a return to JFK after that; I am stone cold broke.”

“Did you open that envelope I gave you last night?” asked Donald.

“Oh, sorry. I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into my room, and I forgot all about it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just let us know when you want to fly back, and we’ll book your flights. The same when you have your visa and want to return.”

“Don’t tell me… Calum anticipated this?”

Sarah laughed.
“Dad was like that. There were times when I was a teenager that I wanted to kill him, but it was him being him. After a bit, I accepted that he was not going to change at all. He was always there for me, and I could not have wanted a better parent. You will get used to his unconventional way of looking at life and preparing for everything he could. I fought it to begin with. Then, I knew that was Calum being Calum, and I’d better get with it because fighting against his will was useless.”

“Once the paperwork is done, you will be an employee of my company, and we’ll fund your flights and travel expenses. Your father can’t touch that.”

Jak was once again shocked at how much Calum knew about his life and how he knew how he would react in this situation. It was almost as if he’d been tracking him everywhere he went in the past few years.

He shook his head in disbelief, but it was just downright unnerving. Had Calum been a closet tranny? Was that the real reason for his bust-up with Jak’s father all those years ago? He decided to bide his time on that question. Then thought again. The picture that Calum had drawn of him was all there out in the vast realm of public information if you knew where to look.

Jak and Sarah left the offices of Mackay, Mackay and Browne half an hour later and walked back to Jak’s B&B via the Botanic Gardens. Even in early autumn, it was an oasis in the middle of the city.

When they reached a quiet spot, Jak, who had been fairly quiet since they’d said goodbye to Donald Mackay, said,

“Was Calum in the closet?”

Sarah stopped and looked Jak in the eye.
“Yes. She would come out for special occasions such as Pride weeks, birthdays and such. We’d go out to dinner together, and no one would comment on her.”

“What did she call herself?”

“Emilia. That is after his great-grandmother. She came from humble stock. She was in service at a big house in the town of Hawick, which is to the south of here. She ran away with the youngest son of the owner of the house. They married at a place called ‘Gretna Green’ before getting on a ship that was bound for New York from Liverpool. That’s how one part of your family ended up stateside in 1911.”

“I’ve heard of Emilia, but she’s been virtually erased from our family history. No one will say why this was, but I was told by my grandmother not to mention her mother ever again,” said Jak.

He continued,
“As for outing Emilia, I expect that every man in the room would be, and I’m being honest here, lusting after you. Sa’ana, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, let alone met. They would not give Emilia a second glance, in my honest opinion.”

“Thank you, Jak. Thank you for being honest. Dad warned me about men who lust after beautiful women. He paid for me to take self-defence classes. I’m a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Karate. He was very proud of me.”

Her voice tailed off.
“You miss him, don’t you?”

“Every day, but he told me that life has to go on. I never had the chance to properly grieve my family in Kenya, but Dad’s funeral let me do that for everyone I have lost.”

Jak sighed.
“I.. I already regret not meeting him in person, but already, I see in you a person of wisdom and I guess that a lot of that comes from him.”

“It does. Without his guidance, I would not have been able to carry on with the charity work that he started.”

Jak looked at Sarah. This time is was with a new appreciation of her qualities.

“Sa’ana, I could never be anywhere near as beautiful as you. Not even 5% as downright gorgeous. Add in your intelligence, and I see a formidable woman.”

“Jak… Calum told me that you were like him, and I brushed him off. My experiences with men are not good ones. They see someone like me, and their neanderthal part takes over. They want just one thing. I can see that you are not like that.”

Then she looked skywards.
“Calum, if you are listening, I’m sorry. Sorry for doubting you. You told me that Jak was different, but I never believed you.”

To his surprise, she added,
“I know that right at this very moment, if you were offered me on a plate, you would not say no. Am I right?”

Jak could not look her in the eye.
“No sane person would, but I would never take advantage of you or even try to make you do anything that you didn’t want to do.”

“Calum, forgive me for what I’m about to do,” said Sarah.

Before he could react, she kissed him right there, in the middle of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. It was not a short kiss either.

“Don’t tell me that Calum decreed this?” said Jak after they’d broken apart.

Sarah laughed and shook her head.

“No, that was all me. You seemed so… so buttoned up, tight. So… in need of opening up.”

“I enjoyed it, and yes, I was on edge. Being with a beautiful woman does that to me. My mother was a former Miss USA. She was so beautiful… until my father drove her to drink because he was caught with his pants down with a hooker. The cops raided the brothel when he happened to be there at the time. Mum became an alcoholic, and after treatment, they were divorced, and she moved out of state. I was six and thought that it was all my fault.”

“Did your mother know about the other you?”

Jak nodded.
“She caught me wearing one of her skirts one day. I thought that she’d get angry, but she didn’t. Instead, she promised that it was to be our secret.”

“Where is she now?”

“The last I heard, she was in Boston, but as hard as I tried, I could not find her, nor could I find anyone who had seen her. She could be anywhere above or below ground.”

“Do you think that she could be dead?”

He shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know what to think, but at the moment, I have other things to think about.”

“There is a lot to take in, isn’t there?”

“Calum was very devious, wasn’t he?”

“He was. Here, I have a bit of a confession to make. I was with Calum when he was told about his heart problem. That night, he told me how he was preparing me for life when he was no longer with us. I knew of his desire to ‘bag all those Munros’ again. So, after one last trip together, he set off. I only saw him twice after that, but that isn’t important. The trip we took was to Boston. We watched you from afar. I was the one who took those photos that Mr Mackay showed you yesterday.”

“Why? Why didn’t you make yourself known to me?”

“I think that was the plan, but do you remember that man you marched with?”

“Yes, he said, that his name was Alex and that he came from Miami. Why?”

Sarah smiled.
“His real name is Jared King. He is a Private Eye based in DC. Your father engaged him to get to know you and to find out what your plans were…”

“Shit… I told him everything. All the pressure from my father since then makes sense now.”

“And because he stuck to you like glue, we both agreed that we should back off. We, as in Calum and I, could not let it be known to your father that he was taking an interest in your life.”

“He’d blow his top even more than he did.”

“Did you see this Alex character after the end of Pride?”

“Yeah. I ran into him a couple of times while out jogging along the Charles River. He said that he’d left Florida because of the growing MAGA movement.”

“He was probably just checking up on you. Now, imagine if Calum had contacted you. Is it probable that you would have told him about Calum?”

“I get you now. He said on more than one occasion that if he found out that Calum was back stateside, he would find him and finish the job. By that, I mean kill him. That was how much they hated each other.”

Sarah shook her head.
“Calum didn’t hate his brother. It was more like he pitied him for not seeing how the world was changing around him. He made that clear in the addendum to his autobiography that he was writing while climbing all those hills.”

“I have a lot to learn about Calum,” commented Jak.

“He was a wonderful man. In time, you will get to understand that.”

“Devious as well. Throwing us together. It was almost as if he wanted us to become a couple, but I don’t know how that can be. Donald said that the company he wants me to run is based somewhere called Kennacraig. I have no idea where that is. My search on Google Maps turned up nothing more than a ferry terminal that is hours away from here, on the other side of the country.”

Sarah laughed.
“Let’s carry on walking.”

Jak didn’t object so Sarah continued.

“You are right about Kennacraig. It is a ferry port. I went there once with Calum, not long after I came to the UK. It was winter, and I froze. Calum laughed, but I never went back other than for the odd day or so in Summer, but it was never a place of joy to me. My reluctance didn’t stop him from telling me about the place. The salmon farms that you will soon legally own are spread out around the places near where the ferry goes from that port. That sort of makes sense to have the HQ somewhere where you can get the ferry to all the business locations. Calum was devious, as you said, but he was a man of simple desires. He lived simply and downright frugally. He would just smile at me when I commented on it. Then he’d say, ‘All the more for you when I’m gone, my dear.’”

“That means a lot of travelling, then? I don’t have a car or a local driving license. Calum’s list of things to do includes getting a license for the UK.”

“If you are based at the ferry port, then it seems to be the perfect place for a base. It is not that far away from his cottage hideaway, so if you are based there, then there is not a lot of travelling to do…”

“I know nothing about fishing, let alone salmon farming.”

Sarah laughed. Jak stopped dead.
“Why the laugh?”

“Calum knew nothing about it when he bought the business. I remember his frustrations and the long days driving there and back while he kept me in school here. I think that was when I stopped taking him for granted and began to love him as a person rather than someone who had rescued me from a warlord in Somalia.”

Jak had never expected Sa’ana to open up like that. They’d only met an hour or so before, yet she’d kissed him and now this. His mind was going up and down like a rollercoaster.

“Don’t look so blank. Shouldn’t you be happy?”

“I am just confused by it all. It shouldn’t be happening to me like this.”

“Like what? Having a pretty woman on your arm who wants to be with you?”

“You are just saying that to be nice to me. I’m mentally a mess.”

Sarah smiled and took Jak’s arm.

“Let’s get your things from your B&B? I’m beginning to get hungry.”

[one hour later]

“We just made it in time,” said Sarah.
They’d had to run from the nearby bus stop to her home in the Murrayfield area of the city due to a rain shower that seemed to appear from nowhere in an otherwise cloudless sky.

“Hang your jacket up on the back of the chair to dry. Your room is up the stairs, on your right,” said Sarah.

“Thanks,” said Jak as he wiped the water off his glasses.

Sarah smiled back at him and headed towards the kitchen.

“That was very nice,” said Jak after the meal that Sarah had cooked up in what seemed almost no time at all.

“Thank you. Since Calum went off on his Munro trip, I’ve not had the chance to cook for someone.”

Jak looked at Sa’ana before saying,
“From my limited understanding of Somalia, it is an Islamic country. So far, nothing that you have said or done tells me that you are a Muslim.”

Sarah laughed.
“I’m not. The War Lord, who was going to sell me as a child bride to an associate, came into my village in Kenya and killed all the men and male children. Then they raped the women and kidnapped the girls to use as sex slaves or to sell for profit. Those whom they sold to men like them were circumcised to make sure that they were pure. Calum rescued me just as my captors were starting to talk about doing it to me. I didn’t know the words that they used, but the doctors who examined me in Nairobi asked me about the others who had had it done. Once they explained what it was, I was able to tell them.”

“That is horrific. How did Calum get involved?”

“He was spending some time close to the border with Somalia, where the charity that I now run works and heard about me and that I was going to be sold. He came back a few days later with a stack of fifty-dollar bills and bought me. At first, I was terrified of him, but once I saw that we were back in Kenya, I began to hope that I might have a life. With lots of care and love from Calum and the people at his charity, I am about as normal as I can get. Calum and I went back to my village a few years ago. I felt that I had unfinished business there. There was nothing left of it. It had gone. The buildings, the people, everything. Only a single bullet-ridden sign showed us where it was.”

“That must have been awful?”

“At the time, it hurt. Thanks to Calum, I have a future here free from those despots.”

Jak wanted to hug her, but something held him back.

Sarah saw that Jak was hesitating.

“About earlier and that kiss?”

“Sorry,” said Jak.

“There is nothing to be sorry for. I wanted to see how you kissed without thinking about it.”

Jak smiled.
“So, it wasn’t my fault then?”

“No, Jak, it wasn’t.”

Then she asked softly,
“When was the last time you kissed a girl?”

“The last time was…”
He went very red in the face.
“At my High School Prom.”

“Was she your date?”

Jak went even redder in the face.
“No. She was the date of the Hockey Captain. He was not amused and slugged me. I woke up in the local emergency department, handcuffed to a bed. Her father was accusing me of rape. I called my father, who sent in a team of lawyers. The whole thing had taken place in full view of the school principal. The cops soon dropped all charges. I found out later that she had asked me to kiss her just to make her date jealous. The last time I heard anything about her was that she was mistress to a State Senator in Memphis, and Hockey Captain sells bargain basement used cars for cash in Nashville.”

“The things we do to impress our dates?”

“Was that the end of it?”

Jak shook his head.
“My dear father gave me a lot of grief for the whole thing, and then he had to go to court to get my arrest record expunged. Even though I was stitched up, a record of an arrest for suspected rape would have stopped me from going to almost every university in the country.”

“That’s mad. You were never charged with anything, let alone found guilty?”

“I learned while at college that the USA has a monster phobia when it comes to even the merest mention of sex. A whole bunch of my classmates ended up on the scrap heap when they held a frat party with loads of booze. One of the hookers that they hired was beaten to a pulp by one of them, who was high on drugs. They were all charged with attempted rape and battery. One by one, they caved and pointed the finger at the culprit, who was tried and sent to jail, but their arrest records were there forever.”

“How did you not get involved?”

“I was the only member of the Frat that didn’t get fingered by the law. I wasn’t there simply because I was attending my grandmother’s funeral more than three hundred miles away. I even read the eulogy and had more than sixty witnesses to prove I was in Tennessee the night the party took place, including the local Chief of Police. The cops interviewed me six times because others kept pointing the finger at me as the organiser. I wasn’t, but it didn’t matter what I said. Only the threat of legal action by my father’s lawyers caused the cops to drop their pursuit of me. That was when my dear father decided that he wanted payback for getting me out of those legal scrapes. I managed to talk him into letting me do a master’s, but he made it clear that when I was done with that, I had to start working for the family energy business.”

“And that was not what you wanted to do?”

Jak shook his head.

“Living in two of the most liberal and diverse cities in the USA, New York and Boston, has had an effect on me. I decided during the first semester of my masters that I wanted nothing to do with what Trump called ‘Good Clean Coal’. It isn’t clean, and even though my family think so, it isn’t good. My dear father’s business is going down the tubes, and he refuses to see that burning coal for power generation is going the way of the animals and plants that died to make the coal in the first place. The quarterly reports show declining revenues and increasing costs. The father of a friend from school is the company’s Geologist, told me more than a year ago that the mine will run out of mineable coal deposits in 2026. That is a disaster that I want nothing to do with.”

Jak sighed.

“Until recently, all my job applications were unanswered or replied with a ‘We are not hiring at the moment’ message, despite them running ads that said otherwise. I have no proof, but I couldn’t help but feel the cold, hard hand of my father somewhere behind it. That’s when the letter from Mackay, Mackay and Browne came and saved the day.”

“Thanks to Calum and his feud with your father.”

“If I had a drink, I’d raise a glass to him. The more I learn about him, the crazier his life gets. He seemed to dabble in all sorts of things.”

“I asked him about all his different businesses once. He would always say something like ‘Diversification, my dear child, diversification while looking over his half-moon reading glasses. It was slightly comical, but I soon learned that if one business goes bad, then there are other ones to fall back on. That is unlike your father, who has bet all the family silver on coal.”

Jak smiled.
“Did you believe him?”

“I didn’t at the time. These days, I would put it down to him simply getting bored with one enterprise and starting a new one rather than having a definite plan. A few of them become real successes, like the Salmon Farming venture.

“That is exactly the picture that I got from the folder that I was given last night.”

“Are you game for trying to run the part of Calum’s empire that he carved out for you?”

“That’s the problem. I am way out of my depth. I’m a scientist… of sorts. I’m not a businessman. I have no idea how to read a balance sheet or create a business plan. Sure, I can read the top-level stuff, but running a business every day is like staring into an abyss and not having a safety rope.”

Sarah laughed.
“Calum made sure that I was ready to take over the charity and other businesses before he went off on his Munro quest. I fully intend to do the same for you. It is not that hard, especially when you have lawyers and accountants doing the hard work.”

Jak looked at this goddess who had fallen into his life and said a small prayer to his maker. If being with her meant living as the person he had always wanted to be, then he’d do it.

[to be continued]