The Bookish Life of Nina Hill(74)

Sarkassian continued. “Twenty million dollars is to be immediately divided between his four legitimate children, with the adult children receiving their money now and Millie’s share being held in trust. His grandchildren each receive a million dollars. Eliza keeps the remaining money, plus all the properties.”

He stopped. Everyone looked at Nina, who was looking at the lawyer.

“Nina gets nothing?” asked Peter, clearly surprised.

Lydia laughed. “That is perfect. I guess Grandpa had more brain cells left than I thought.”

“No, no, William wrote a very specific section for Nina.” The lawyer turned over a page and began reading.

“To my daughter Nina, who has remained unacknowledged by me until now, I leave the contents of the garage at 2224 Cahuenga Boulevard.” There was muttering around the table, but when Nina looked at everyone, they didn’t appear mad, although Lydia was frowning.

“What’s in the garage?” Nina asked. She got a flash of that show where people bid for the unseen contents of a storage container. What was she getting? Several broken table lamps and a stamp album? A severed head in a big glass jar? Nina realized that was from a movie and started trying to place it.

Sarkassian looked slightly embarrassed. “Well, William was an unusual man, given to somewhat romantic gestures and ideas.”

“The garage is full of chocolate?” Nina was totally down for that. “Champagne?”

“No.”

“Roses?”

“No.”

Nina had a sudden insane surge of hope. “Kittens?” She did realize that wouldn’t work; she just always hoped for kittens.

The lawyer coughed. “No. The garage contains a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am.”

Nina stared at him blankly, then a fact popped into her head. “Wait, like from Knight Rider?”

“Exactly like. A black Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.”

“He left me K.I.T.T.?” Nina immediately flashed back to many happy evenings lying on the floor in front of the TV, listening to Louise murmuring about David Hasselhoff’s leather pants. “Did he think I was a lone crusader in a dangerous world?”

“Good Lord.” Lydia’s tone was incredulous. “He left you a car?”

“You can have it if you want. I don’t want it.” Nina really didn’t. She didn’t care about cars; she barely drove. The movie with the head in a jar was The Silence of the Lambs, by the way; it had come back to her.

Lydia shook her head. She was clearly bothered. “An intelligent car is so much more fun than money.”

Nina looked at her. “It’s not really an intelligent car. It’s just a car.” She turned to Sarkassian. “Unless it comes with an actual com-link wristwatch thingy, in which case I am totally keeping it.”

“I know that,” said Lydia, her voice scornful. “But he only left the rest of us money.”

There was a pause.

“Maybe he thought you only cared about his money,” said Eliza, quietly.

“Well, he would have been wrong. But seeing as he never asked me anything at all about my life, how would he know?” Lydia looked around. “None of you ever ask me anything.”

After another awkward silence, Sarkassian coughed and said, “Well, whether Nina takes the car or not, the will makes it quite clear that she has to go drive it at least once before she chooses to sell it or give it away.”

Nina frowned at him. “What kind of legal provision is that? What is this, Brewster’s Millions?”

Clearly, the lawyer had never enjoyed that brand of Hollywood madcap legal comedy, because he looked at her with a tiny wrinkle between his eyebrows. “I don’t know what that means. I have the keys here. Please be nice to the mechanic who’s been taking excellent care of it for the last twenty years. When I told him about the will, he hoped you would be impossible to find.” He slid the keys across the table, and Nina suddenly had a terrible thought.

“I can’t drive stick.”

He raised his eyebrows, smoothing out that pesky wrinkle. “Well, here’s your chance to learn.”

As Nina sat in the Lyft heading back home, she checked her phone. Nothing. Impulsively, she sent Tom a text.

“Hi there, I just inherited a car.”

No response. Maybe he was working.

“It’s a 1982 Pontiac Firebird. Like K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider.”

Still nothing. Maybe he was busy.

“It doesn’t have William Daniels’s voice, though, so, you know . . .”

Silence. Maybe he was with someone else.

She looked out of the window, noticing all the couples walking along, holding hands, smiling at each other, or even simply sitting across from each other looking at their phones. She’d always loved the feeling of being separate, of being alone while everyone else clumped together like mold on the inside rim of an old coffee cup. But now she felt lonely.

She leaned forward. “Hey, can I change our destination?”

The driver met her eyes in the mirror. “Sure, but you have to do it in the app.”

“I can’t tell you? You know, verbally?”

He shook his head. “Well, sure, you can tell me, verbally, or in sign language, or on a piece of parchment carried by a pigeon, but for me to alter my course, you also have to change it in the app.” He shrugged, his eyes back on the road. “Despite the fact we’re a scant two feet apart, our relationship requires the intermediation of a computer system housed in a server farm neither of us will ever see. Thus technology further separates us, eroding our trust in one another and leading our species down a path to a future where we only know one another on a screen and can only talk to one another in characters, and where ideas are owned by companies run by algorithms.”