Divorced Mom Mocked for Inheriting a Junk Gas Station — Until the $200M Secret Was Uncovered
When the lawyer slid the folder across the table, Angela Brooks already knew what was coming.
She could see it in his eyes—the polite discomfort, the forced professionalism people used when delivering bad news dressed up as responsibility.
“This is everything your father left you,” he said.
Angela opened the folder.
One property deed.
One location.
A rundown gas station off Route 17.
No cash.
No savings.
No investments.
Just a gas station most locals referred to as “that dead place by the woods.”
Angela let out a short, humorless laugh.
“You’re serious?”
The lawyer nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Across the table, her younger brother Mark smirked.
“Well,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “looks like Dad finally showed his sense of humor.”
The Joke Everyone Enjoyed
By the end of the week, everyone knew.
Family. Friends. Even her ex-husband.
Angela was thirty-nine, divorced, raising two kids—Caleb, eleven, and Sophie, eight—on a modest income as a school administrative assistant in upstate New York.
Money was always tight.
Her father, Harold Brooks, had been known as a strange man. Quiet. Private. Obsessed with “numbers” no one else ever saw.
But people assumed he had savings.
He didn’t.
At least, not on paper.
“So let me get this straight,” her ex-husband Derek said over the phone, laughing openly. “Your big inheritance is a broken gas station no one’s used in ten years?”
Angela closed her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he continued. “If you need help selling the scrap metal, let me know.”
She hung up without replying.
The Gas Station No One Wanted
The first time Angela visited the property alone, she understood why everyone laughed.
The asphalt was cracked beyond repair.
The pumps were ancient, yellowed with age.
The convenience store windows were dusty, the interior dark and empty except for rusted shelves and a single old refrigerator humming weakly.
A faded sign leaned crookedly:
BROOKS FUEL
EST. 1974
Angela stood there with her hands on her hips, fighting tears.
Her father had been distant most of her life.
Emotionally unavailable.
More comfortable talking to ledgers than to people.
And this… this was what he left her?
A liability?
