Chương 6
“Did my mother know he would do this?”
Samuel was quiet long enough to become an answer.
“She feared he might.”
The following morning, Dianne moved out of Hawthorne.
Her temporary room was a narrow studio above a locksmith’s shop on the Upper West Side, leased through one of Samuel’s clients. The radiator clanged without producing much heat. The shower turned cold after seven minutes. A previous tenant had left a single fork and a framed print of sailboats.
Dianne unpacked with military precision until she reached the bottom of her suitcase and found the napkin from the graduation banquet. Kayla had written, DO NOT LET THE FELONS RUIN THE CAKE, in blue ink.
Dianne sat on the floor with the napkin in her hand.
She had not eaten the cake.
For lunch she bought soup from the deli downstairs and watched a locksmith repair the shop’s metal gate. He kept dropping the same screw, swearing softly each time. On the third drop, he noticed her watching and said, “It’s a very committed screw.”
She laughed before she could stop herself.
The sound made her feel disloyal.
Samuel arrived at three with two boxes of estate records and a rule that she was not to read anything after midnight.
“That is not enforceable,” she said.
“No. It is advice.”
“I thought lawyers charged for advice.”
“I am charging the estate.”
“The estate is mine.”
“Then you are paying me to annoy you.”
He placed the boxes on the small table. The room had only one chair, so Dianne sat on the bed while he remained standing.
The first box contained copies of Evelyn’s medical evaluations, the will, property records, and correspondence. The second held household files recovered from the brownstone after Samuel obtained temporary access from the probate court.
Dianne opened a folder labeled STAFF.
Inside were payroll receipts, holiday schedules, and a handwritten list of Christmas bonuses. Her mother had added a question mark beside the gardener’s name and written, ASK ARTHUR WHY SO LOW.
Dianne ran her thumb over the ink.
Samuel pretended to examine the radiator.
“What was in the sealed folder last night?” she asked.
“The original estate notice, forensic authentication of the phone, copies of title-company communications, and an affidavit from your mother.”
“What affidavit?”
He looked at her. “She instructed me to preserve it unless Arthur attempted to challenge the will or transfer the brownstone.”
“You had a statement from her and didn’t tell me?”
“I told you there were materials I could not discuss until certain conditions occurred.”
“I thought that meant financial records.”
“It included the affidavit.”
“What does it say?”
“That she believed Arthur and Celia were pressuring her to alter the estate plan. That she wished the brownstone to pass to you. That she feared Arthur would use your education and housing to control you after her death.”
Dianne stood.
The room was too small for the movement. Her knee struck the table, and one of the boxes slid. Samuel caught it.
“She knew he would throw me out.”
“She feared it.”
“And she left me there.”
“She was dying.”
“She had months.”
“She spent some of those months trying to secure the property.”
“She could have told me.”
“Yes.”
The word stopped her.
Samuel set the box down.
Dianne’s eyes burned, but tears would have required releasing the pressure in her chest, and she did not know what would happen after that.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” she asked.
“She thought knowledge would make you confront him before the documents were protected.”
“She didn’t trust me.”
“She did not trust your temper.”
Dianne looked toward the sailboats on the wall.
The broken nose. The disciplinary report. The breakfast when Arthur told her she had failed West Point and she threw a glass against the pantry door. Her mother had known exactly which weakness Arthur could provoke.
Samuel sat in the chair.
“She loved you,” he said.
“That isn’t the same as trusting me.”
“No.”
Dianne hated him for refusing to soften it.
They worked until eight. Samuel left the medical records and took the original affidavit with him. After he was gone, Dianne heated canned soup and read household receipts.
At eleven forty-seven she found a monthly charge for a storage unit in Queens, paid from Evelyn’s personal account. The payments continued for four months after her death, then stopped.
Dianne photographed the receipt and sent it to Samuel.
His reply arrived immediately.
GO TO BED.
She sent another photograph showing the unit number.
His second reply contained no words, only a period.
The storage facility had already emptied the unit for nonpayment.
Samuel learned this the next morning. The contents had been sold at auction six weeks earlier to a resale dealer in New Jersey. He contacted the dealer through counsel. The dealer remembered several boxes of women’s clothing, framed photographs, and office files. Most had been separated and sold.
Arthur’s lawyers accused Samuel of conducting an improper private investigation.
Dianne spent Wednesday writing her account for West Point.
She described the fake rejection email, the loss of access to her bank account, her removal from Arthur’s home, and the discovery that the official acceptance had been diverted. She included the confrontation at the notary office, her decision to play the recording, and her statement to Detective Morales that she had wanted to see her father’s reaction.
She also included the fight at Hawthorne.
At one in the morning, despite Samuel’s rule, she reached the paragraph about her mother’s mental state.
She wrote: My mother was sometimes confused during the final months of her illness.
Then she deleted sometimes.
She tried: My mother experienced intermittent confusion.
May you like
That sounded like a medical report.
Finally she wrote: On some days my mother knew the exact amount of a grocery bill from three weeks earlier. On other days she asked me whether I had seen her mother, who had been dead for twenty years. I cannot truthfully describe her as always clear or always confused.
