“Yeah, well, if he’s been robbing her so that there’s nothing left in her trust fund, I can hire a forensic accountant to find evidence of fraud. If Sewall is threatening to put his sister in a substandard nursing home out of spite, it’s not just a pathetic revenge, it’s laying him open to a serious legal charge. If that’s where Leydon lands, I will know about it and I will make sure that the public guardian also learns about it. That’s really all I have to say.”
I waited for her to respond. She gulped miserably. I was one more strong personality pressuring her, but she finally nodded. On my way back through the kitchen I stopped beside Leydon’s mother, who was pulling bad strawberries out of the boxes Faith had brought home, laying them on a gold-rimmed serving plate.
“I don’t fault you for getting worn out by Leydon’s illness,” I said. “It’s hard on everyone around her. But you always accused her of being ill on purpose, and you never appreciated her amazing gifts—that’s what infuriates me.”
Behind me, Faith gave a nervous gasp, but her mother-in-law said, “You and Leydon never had any standards of decency, so it doesn’t surprise me that you would think it proper to lecture me in my own home. Faith, I’m putting these where you can clearly see their flaws, so that you know what to look for next time. We couldn’t give these to the maid, let alone to Helen.”
“Helen?” I did a double take as the name finally registered with me. “Would that be Helen Kendrick?”
Faith murmured, “Sewall is one of her Gleaners and is an adviser to the campaign. She—we—”
“The Warshawski woman has no need to know our private business, Faith,” her mother-in-law interrupted. “I am only grateful that Leydon won’t be here. The last advisory committee meeting she disrupted in a disgraceful way!”
“What? She argued with Kendrick and made her look stupid on abortion or immigration or Social Security?” I asked.
“She was funny.” Trina Ashford, who’d stood silent in the background, startled all of us by speaking. “She quoted all this Shakespeare. At school they never tell us he wrote about real life, but she was going on and on—something about the country and all the offices being for sale—I didn’t even know it was Shakespeare at first, because she made it sound like it was right out of the news. Then she told me and Terence how—”
“It was a vulgar display and utterly typical of how Leydon and the Warshawski woman disregarded normal social conduct,” Mother Ashford said to her granddaughter. “It was the next week that we had to go to her apartment and see the disgusting drawings she’d created. You may want to lecture Sewall on his financial responsibilities, Ms. Warshawski, but paying to clean and repaint the stairwells in Leydon’s building did not come cheap, I assure you. And that was on top of trying to clean up the mess she was making at Ruhetal.”
“What mess was that?” I asked. “The social workers who talked to me never said anything about her destroying any hospital property.”
“She thought she was still a lawyer. She thought she was in a position to represent someone else, when she couldn’t begin to look after herself. We had to send—” Mother Ashford clipped her lips shut.
“Had to send what?” I thought of my meeting at Dick’s law firm. “You sent Eloise Napier out to stop her?”
Ms. Ashford smiled, a grim, sly smirk that would have looked coarse on anyone, even a vulgar person like me. “You don’t need to know. Suffice it to say, we put a stop to all that nonsense, but it didn’t come cheap.”
“So the only thing you really care about is the money you spend on your daughter. Interesting. Maybe that’s why you live with your son, to save yourself a few bucks.” I picked up the plate and dumped the moldy berries into the garbage disposal. “If you treated Leydon the way you treat Faith, all she ever learned was how little respect you have for others. And, by the way, Leydon is still a lawyer.”
I set the plate in the sink. The maid materialized as I marched down the hall. She gave me the ghost of a smile before shutting the door behind me.
As I walked down the drive to my car, Trina surprised me, running around from the back of the house to intercept me. “Are you friends with my aunt Leydon?”
I answered her honestly, although I wondered what had made her approach me. “We were close friends in law school. Not so much in the last few years—my fault. I wasn’t strong enough to cope with her illness.”
“Is she going to die?”
I looked at her seriously. “I don’t know. I’ve been to see her several times and she still hasn’t recovered consciousness. But she can breathe on her own, so there may be some hope.”
“I know Aunt Leydon can be a pain, but no one out here is, I don’t know, energetic the way she is. Maybe you think I’m rude to my mom—I saw how you were looking at me—but I wish she’d stand up to Grandma the way Aunt Leydon did!”
“Maybe your mother realizes your household would explode if everyone was standing up to each other all the time. Although if it was me, I would solve the problem by moving out.”