Over Her Dead Body(37)

“I know what you are expecting,” he continued, “but I have chosen not to give it to you. For that I make no apologies. Your expectations are of your own making, as are all the choices one makes in a lifetime; whether to help or look away, give or take, flee or fight, hoard or sacrifice.”

He paused. He seemed nervous. And I suddenly got nervous, too.

“With this, my last will and testament, I had an opportunity to be generous,” he read, then looked up at us. “But so did all of you.”

My heart thumped in my ears. My nervousness turned to terror. Good God, what has she done?

He continued. “This document represents my wishes, with no coercion or undue influence from anyone named herein. It was not written capriciously or with malice. My mind is sound and clear.” His eyes met mine, like the next bit was meant for me. “I am not available to entertain your objections, so you will have to work them out for yourselves. What you do next is up to you. Please choose wisely.”

The room was so quiet you could hear our breakfasts digesting. And they were not going down smoothly.

He cleared his throat. “On to the will, then,” he said, flipping the page.

I looked at Winnie. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow, like she found this amusing. But this wasn’t funny to me. I had a family. A mortgage. Kids to put through college. I needed that money. I couldn’t afford for this to take a weird turn.

“To my children, Charles Anthony George Junior and Winifred Elizabeth George, I leave the contents of their childhood rooms.”

My hands and feet went numb. The contents of our rooms? What fresh hell is that? My leg bounced under the table. She probably just wanted to fuck with us, I reasoned, make us think that’s all we were getting.

“To my brother, Roy Bingham Lake, and each of his children, Nathan, Sophia, Lily, and Henry, I leave fifty thousand dollars each, for a total of two hundred fifty thousand dollars to Roy Lake and family.”

OK, phew. I had figured Nathan’s family would get something. Surely everything else is coming to us now.

“The rest of my assets,” the lawyer read, “including, but not limited to, my stocks, bonds, IRA, the balance of my husband’s life insurance policy, proceeds from the sale of my business, my home and all its contents besides what I have already bequeathed to my children, I leave to Miss Ashley Brooks.”

Stunned silence.

Nobody moved or breathed.

I remember my thoughts being something along the lines of—

WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK?

I looked at Winnie. She was as baffled as I was.

I was about to ask, “Who the hell is Ashley Brooks?” but, as it turns out, she was sitting right across from me. I know that because Nathan said, quite loudly, to that young woman in the tweed suit, “Ashley, what just happened?”

And she just shrugged.

“Thank you all for coming, and once again my sincere condolences for your loss,” my mother’s lawyer said as he set her train wreck of a will down on the table and bid us adieu with a nod of his puppet head.

I looked up at Winnie. She was staring at the wall like a shell-shocked somnambule. Ashley Brooks, the woman in the tweed suit who had just stolen my inheritance, was on her feet and beelining for the door.

So I pushed back my chair and went after her.





CHAPTER 29




* * *



WINNIE


“I’m so sorry,” my aunt Rita said, taking the seat just vacated by my mother’s spritely heiress. My mom had done some whack-a-doodle shit over the years, but with this, her final act, she had outdone even herself. “You must be so disappointed.”

I was many things in that moment—flabbergasted, bewildered, stupefied, dumbstruck. But disappointed? Not so much.

“My mother had her reasons for doing what she did,” I said, once I found my voice. “Whatever they were, I respect them.”

“That’s very evolved of you,” Aunt Rita said, in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe me. So I clarified.

“I never expected to get the money.”

“You didn’t?”

“I gave it a fifty-fifty chance.”

“I know things were strained between you,” she said. And I corrected her.

“She hated my guts. Charlie’s, too. But she was also wildly unpredictable. I daresay she took pride in that.”

“Unpredictable how?” Aunt Rita asked. Since we hadn’t had a service, I never got to eulogize my mom. Now seemed like as good a time as any, so I ponied up.

“She would forget my birthday,” I told her, “then two months later buy me a horse.” The look on my aunt’s face suggested she had never heard this story.

“Like, a real live horse?”

“Yes. But I never wanted a horse. I didn’t even know how to ride. So it just sat there in some stable up the 5 freeway. Eventually she sold it. We never spoke of it again.”

Aunt Rita studied me as she considered that. She seemed to be enthralled by my tale of woe, so I offered another one.

“She once flew in from Paris just to see my piano recital, only to go back the very same night.”

“The same night?”

“Yes. I think she was home for about three hours. There wasn’t time for her chauffeur to go home, so she sat him in the back row. I could see his funny hat out of the corner of my eye the entire time.”