“I can see you’ve developed your father’s stoicism, Coralie,” Ezra muses. “I don’t think I’ll ever meet another person capable of hiding their feelings so well. He was a bit of a closed book, your old man.”
“He hated everybody,” I say evenly. “He just never wanted them to know. He was constantly trying to mask his disdain.”
Ezra gives me that look. The one that means he’s trying to figure out if I’m being rude. If I mean that my father hated him. My father never said either way, but judging from his black mood whenever the man in front of me paid a visit, I’m willing to bet he did.
Ezra blinks, and then looks away. “All right. Well, I’m sure you have a lot on your mind at the moment, Ms. Taylor. You must have an awful lot to organize in advance for your father’s memorial. How about we make this short and sweet?”
“That would be perfect.”
Opening the top drawer of his desk, Ezra draws out a small stack of papers, gathering them together before placing them down on the scuffed wood in front of him. Tapping the pad of his index finger against the top sheet of paper, he clears his throat, frowning at me. “The first thing you should know, Ms. Taylor, is that your father set aside a considerable amount of money for you in his will. Over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in fact. Assuming you want to sell the house, which he also bequeathed to you, then you’re looking at somewhere in the vicinity of half a million dollars.”
I think about crawling back into the bathtub at the hotel later, and how good it will feel to let the cold water numb me to my core. “I don’t care about any money. I don’t want it.”
Ezra pauses, digesting this information. He scans through the black text printed on the paper in front of him, and by the looks of things, he’s searching for something. “Ah, yes. I knew I’d seen something to this effect. I just didn’t think it would be a problem, so I didn’t read properly. It states in your father’s will that in order to receive your late mother’s possessions, you must accept everything your father leaves you, money and property included.”
“That makes absolutely no sense. He boxed up my mother’s things and left them to disintegrate in the attic. He wouldn’t have given a shit about me having them.” Even though I sound convinced of this fact as I speak, I know it’s not true. Dad knew Mom’s things would be the only things of interest to me once he was gone. He knew that this was one last way of trying to control me. “What happens if I refuse to accept it all? What happens to Mom’s things?”
Ezra frowns at the paper again. “You father left very specific instructions that the contents of the attic space be burned.”
Spiteful motherfucker. My blood feels like it’s surging around my body in an angry charge, making my hands and feet tingle. “Fine. So I take everything. I get Mom’s stuff. The end?”
“The end, yes. Your father also left behind a sum of ten thousand dollars for his burial service and funeral costs. He made requests that his service be held at St. Regis of Martyr’s Catholic Church on Glendale and Cranforth, and that a midnight mass be held.”
“He can’t just do that. He can’t just demand that a midnight mass be held in his honor. Can he?”
“The priest in situ at St. Regis signed off on it when your father created his will. You’ll need attend St. Regis and discuss the matter with him if you have any questions. I’m afraid I’m not particularly well versed in the cans and can’ts of the Catholic Church. In the Jewish faith, we sit Shiva for seven days for a loved one, so one midnight mass service doesn’t seem like too excessive, if you ask me.”
“It was my mother who was catholic. My father never stepped foot inside a church when I was a kid. Not once. Mom used to take me and he would sit at home and drink himself blind.”
It’s very obvious from the way Ezra’s shoulders inch up toward his ears that this topic—the topic of my father being a complete fucker—isn’t one he’s comfortable with. Fuck him, though. It’s not exactly comfortable for me, either. If I have to sit through this bullshit, pretending to care and to be in mourning, then Ezra has to deal with me being a little hostile along the way.