SANDRA
In my day, the study was the den. It wasn’t as big then as Richard Walker made it during the Great Renovation of 1994, when we got cracked open like an egg, scrambled and remade, puffed up into a soufflé of useless rooms and spiral staircases and “breakfast nooks” and window seats.
My favorite place: in the armchair, feet up, cigarette burning in the ashtray and a drink in my hand, the deep purple walls pulsing in the light from the TV, like being at the center of a heart. Bay windows belly out over the back lawn, and in the distance stands a shaggy dark line of trees, thick as a group of sheepdogs.
Minna looks as if she needs a cigarette. Caroline, too. They’re gaping at each other like two trout on ice at the grocery store. Even Trenton has straightened up.
Minna is the one to speak first. “Trenton? Why the hell would he leave the house to Trenton?”
“Probably because I’m the only one of us who didn’t hate him,” Trenton says. He shakes a bit of hair from his eyes. When he’s not slouching and sulking and playing with his zits, he’s not so bad looking. He’s got a little of his father in him—straight nose, nice chin.
“Don’t be Victorian, Trenton,” Minna says. “I didn’t hate him.”
I’m feeling especially nice about Minna today. I can’t help it if I’m a little aglow, a little warm and fuzzy, as though all the lights are on at once. She knows about me! She remembers. I’d bet my last dollar that means other people remember me, too. Everyone likes to be recognized and appreciated. Those were my brains on the study wall, thankyouverymuch.
I’m glad that Martin at least had the decency to kill me in the study.
“He can’t possibly leave the house to Trenton,” Caroline cuts in shrilly. “For God’s sake—Trenton’s only fifteen.”
“Sixteen,” Trenton corrects her.
“Exactly,” Caroline says. “He’s a minor.”
“The property will be held in trust until Trenton turns eighteen,” Dennis says. Over the course of the hour his skin has gone a mottled pink color, like he’s just washed up in too-hard, too-hot water.
“In trust?” Caroline parrots. “In trust to who?”
Dennis jerks his head to the left, some kind of nervous tic. With his scrawny neck, and his paunch, he reminds me a little of one of those mechanical birds we used to perch at the edge of a bowl: dipping, dipping. “Mr. Walker appointed several trustees,” he says, “myself included.”
Caroline throws up her hands and settles back in her chair. “I see. So it’s a scam.”
“Mom,” Minna says.
“It’s one of those—what do you call them—pyramid schemes.”
“My mother isn’t a finance person,” Minna says to Dennis.
“Don’t speak about me as though I’m not here, Minna.”
Trenton has lost interest already and slumps backward. “Forget it,” he says. “I don’t want it, anyway.”
Caroline looks at Dennis as though to say, See?
“I’m afraid that isn’t how these things work,” Dennis says.
Up until now, the will has been as boring as laundry. Everything exactly as expected and all aboveboard. Richard is a whole lot nicer dead than he was alive, I’ll tell you that. A whopping half a million for both children and another to Amy, and the contents of the house to Caroline, to sell if she wants. That should bring in a nice little bundle.
“I’m telling you, I don’t care what you do with it,” Trenton insists. “Sell it. Turn it into a hotel. Burn the whole thing down, like Minna said.”
Alice makes a strangled sound. She’s been wound up tighter than a nun’s asshole since the Walkers came home.
She’s afraid. She knows the truth will come out now. Everything will come up, like after the floods of ’79 when whole sheets of mud slid up to the porch, battered the windows, uprooted trees, turned up rotten hats and stinking shoes and even a forty-year-old turtle with the face of an old man. Brought Maggie, Alice’s daughter, to my door, too.
Remember that: remember that about Alice, when you’re tempted to believe everything she tells you; when she says that I’m full of shit, that I’m paranoid, that I’ve rewritten the past. Her own child—her only child—didn’t know her at all. She told me so herself.
“Minna!” Caroline pretends to look shocked.
Minna waves a hand. “I wasn’t serious.”
Dennis clears his throat. He’s obviously in way over his head. He probably spends most of his time rezoning decks and settling divorces. He’s getting plowed by the Walkers. “I’m afraid that’s not quite how it works,” he repeats again. “And you won’t actually have the power to decide on a course of action—”
“Until I’m eighteen, I know,” Trenton cuts him off.
“Look, are we done yet?” Minna asks, starting to stand. “I should check on Amy.”
“Not quite,” Dennis says, and he jerks his head to the left again as he fingers his collar. “Mr. Walker made several other provisions—”
“Of course he did,” Caroline says. “He lived to be a pain. I don’t know why I thought it would be different once he was dead.”
Dennis presses on: “He requested, first, that his ashes be buried, not scattered. And he would like to be interred somewhere on the property.”
“We knew that,” Minna says. “He always said he wanted to stay here. Wouldn’t be dragged out come death, hell, or high water.”
“There’s another thing,” Dennis starts, and then stops. “A fairly large bequest . . . ” He shuffles the papers in his hands and clears his throat. His skin is just getting pinker. It looks like he’s sprouting a rash. For a moment he stands sputtering, opening and closing his mouth. Then he turns to Caroline. “Maybe it would be better if we discussed it alone?”
Caroline stares. “I don’t care,” she says. “What did he do? Leave half his money to a dog pound or something?”
“He hated dogs,” Trenton says.
Dennis places the papers next to him on the desk and rearranges them so their corners match up. Minna has sat down again. He deliberately avoids her stare. For a moment, the room is still.
This is going to be good.
“Mr. Walker has left a sum of money to an Adrienne Cadiou,” he says.
Minna and Caroline exchange a momentary glance, no more than a flicker of their eyes.
Minna says, “Trenton, can you go check on Amy?” Her voice is high.
“Who’s Adrienne?” he asks.
“Please, Trenton.” She looks at him, eyes dark, the same way she always did. Don’t put the candlesticks there. It works. He stands up—which is to say, he slurps his way off the chair and oozes out of the room.
Time ticks by: seconds, minutes.
“Do you know her?” Dennis asks.