Chapter 10: The Last Call Richard Made
The call from Richard's attorney came on a Tuesday morning, five weeks later.
Claire was in the garden with Evan, who had decided that the patch of ground along the back fence needed to be a vegetable garden and was explaining this to her with the kind of certainty that left no room for disagreement.
She had already agreed to tomatoes and something he was calling mystery squash.
Her phone rang.
She looked at the name.
Marcus.
"Evan," she said.
"Give me two minutes."
She walked to the far end of the garden.
"The attorney's office filed charges this morning," Marcus said.
"Richard Bennett has been formally charged with estate fraud and document forgery.
His attorney contacted me an hour ago requesting an urgent settlement conference on the civil claim."
Claire looked at the back of Evan's head.
He was crouching over the soil, very serious about something.
"When?" she said.
"Thursday.
Two days.
Will you come?"
"Yes."
She went back to Evan and crouched down beside him.
"What did you find?" she asked.
He held up a smooth flat stone, dark grey with a white stripe through the middle.
"It was just here," he said.
"In the dirt."
"Good things sometimes are," she said.
He turned it over in his palm, satisfied.
The settlement conference took place in Marcus's largest meeting room.
Richard arrived with two attorneys and sat at the far end of the table.
He looked, for the first time that Claire could remember, like a man who understood the weight of what he was carrying.
The ease was gone.
The calculation was still present but there was nothing left underneath it to hold it up.
He did not look at her when she sat down.
Halford opened.
The figure he placed on the table was high — genuinely high.
An acknowledgment, wrapped in legal language, that the estate claim was legitimate, that Evan's standing as Daniel's heir was not contestable, and that a structured settlement was in everyone's interest.
Marcus countered.
They went back and forth for ninety minutes.
When the final number was agreed upon, Richard's attorney pushed the settlement document across the table.
Richard picked up the pen.
He held it for a moment.
Then he looked at Claire for the first time.
"Daniel would have hated this," he said.
"No," Claire said quietly.
"He would have hated what you did to his son."
Richard signed.
He capped the pen and set it on the table and stood without another word.
His attorneys gathered their papers.
They filed out.
The door closed.
Marcus set his pen down and looked at the signed document.
"It's done," he said.
Claire looked at the document.
Evan's name was on it in three places.
The trust figure was real and large and specific.
The scholarship provision — Sophie's name, her dates, her purpose — was in the attached addendum, exactly as Marcus had drafted it.
"It's done," she said.
She thought of Sophie's letter.
*When it's really over — let yourself rest.*
May you like
She sat with that for a moment.
Then she picked up her bag, thanked Marcus, and walked out into the afternoon.
