The Dinner Where I Stopped Apologizing

Chapter 4 The Mean One

The lawyer's name was Ruth Calder. Her office was on the fourteenth floor of a building that smelled like old paper and expensive coffee. She was sixty, maybe, with gray hair cut short and a stare that made you want to sit up straighter.

"Your father called," she said before I sat down. "He said you need someone who isn't afraid of Geraldine Vance. I am not afraid of Geraldine Vance. I am afraid of poorly drafted trusts and clients who cry in my office. Don't do either."

"I don't cry in offices," I said.

"Good. Then we can work."

I told her everything. The dinner. The hospital. The visitation call. The Devlin acquisition list. The poison pill. The March fifteenth deadline. She took notes on a yellow pad and did not interrupt.

When I finished, she set the pen down.

"Your mother cannot amend the trust. She is not a trustee. Your father is. Wallace is the successor trustee if your father is incapacitated. Right now your father is in a hospital bed with a heart that is reminding him it exists. If she can get a doctor to say he is not competent, she will try to have Wallace act, and Wallace is eighty-one and fond of your family, which is a liability."

"Wallace wouldn't--"

"Wallace would, if he thought he was protecting your father from a fight. Kind men make terrible trustees." She tapped the pad. "We do three things. First, we get your father to sign a letter confirming he is competent and that he does not authorize any amendment. Second, we notify the Devlin bank in writing that any offer made to Geraldine Vance is unauthorized. Third, we prepare the foundation transfer as a backup, in case your father dies before March fifteenth."

I flinched. She did not apologize.

"I need you to be practical," she said. "Sentiment is for after the documents are filed."

I signed a retainer. I used the discretionary clause. Ruth called Wallace that afternoon and told him, in a voice I could hear through the speaker, that if he so much as looked at an amendment without my father's wet-ink signature, she would have him before the bar.

Wallace, to his credit, said, "I was hoping someone would say that."

I went back to the hospital. My father signed the letter. Daniela Reyes witnessed it. Dr. Fielding wrote a note that said Thomas Vance was oriented, competent, and fully capable of managing his affairs. I photographed all of it. I emailed copies to Ruth, to Wallace, and to myself.

My mother arrived as I was leaving. She was wearing the navy coat she wore to board meetings. She looked at me the way she looked at waiters who brought the wrong wine.

"You're making this ugly," she said.

"It was already ugly. I'm just taking notes."

"Claire. Come home. We can talk about this like adults."

"We talked about it at Bellamy's. You told me to apologize for asking to be treated like a person." I stepped around her. "I'm done apologizing."

In the parking garage I sat in the car with the engine off and added a line to the note called Larkin.

She will try the doctor next.