Chapter 8: Richard Comes Anyway
He came at ten in the morning.
We were in Evelyn's apartment by then — a place of high ceilings and quiet rooms that smelled of old books and something faintly floral.
My mother was asleep in a guest room.
I had managed another two hours on a sofa that was the softest thing I had ever touched.
Evelyn was at the kitchen table with coffee when the front desk called up.
"Mr.
Hargrove is in the lobby," the doorman said.
"He says he doesn't have an appointment but that Mrs.
Whitmore will want to see him."
Evelyn looked at Gerald, who was standing near the kitchen doorway.
"Send him up," she said.
Gerald straightened.
"Are you certain?"
"Completely." She set down her coffee.
"Wake Sarah.
Tell her to stay in the room until I come for her.
And stay close."
Richard Hargrove was not what I expected.
I had built him into something large and dark, the way children build the things they fear.
But the man who came through the door was in his late sixties, silver-haired, with a golfer's tan and a suit that fit him very well.
He looked like someone's pleasant uncle.
He stopped when he saw me.
"So she is here," he said.
"Sit down, Richard," Evelyn said.
He sat across from her at the kitchen table.
He didn't look at me again — a deliberate thing, I realized.
He was refusing to acknowledge me as relevant.
"I assume you've spoken to an attorney," he said.
"I have."
"Then you know that whatever Sarah has told you, the 1987 agreement—"
"Is void," Evelyn said.
"Franklin Cross filed the injunction at twelve forty-seven this morning.
Your motion has been halted.
Your attorneys have the paperwork."
Richard's jaw moved slightly.
"Franklin Cross doesn't have grounds—"
"He has a recording." Evelyn's voice was perfectly level.
"Of you.
In Sarah's apartment in Portland.
Three years ago." She let that sit for a moment.
"You told her you had falsified the document.
You told her you had paid someone to suppress her original filing.
You told her that Edward would have changed the will." She tilted her head slightly.
"In some detail."
The tan didn't help him now.
The color underneath it was doing something different.
"That recording is inadmissible," he said.
"Oregon is a two-party consent state."
"Oregon is a one-party consent state," Evelyn said.
"Sarah was a party to the conversation.
Her attorney confirmed it last night."
Richard's hand, resting on the table, curled slowly inward.
"You have nothing that proves the lineage," he said.
"Letters can be forged.
A necklace proves nothing on its own."
"The photograph of Edward proves the necklace's provenance.
The letters have been submitted for handwriting analysis.
The necklace has already been matched to estate inventory records from 1969." She folded her hands.
"And Sarah has agreed to a DNA test.
The results will be available within the week.
We don't need them for the injunction, but we will have them."
Richard looked at her for a long moment.
Then his expression changed.
The pleasantness dropped away and what was underneath it was not rage — it was something colder and more calculated.
"You're making a mistake," he said quietly.
"You open this, you open everything.
Edward's other relationships.
The things he kept from you.
Are you prepared for what comes out when this becomes public?"
"I've had thirty years to make my peace with who Edward was," Evelyn said.
"Sarah is his daughter.
Clara is his granddaughter.
That is not a scandal.
That is a family."
"The press will not see it that way."
"Then let them write what they like." She stood.
"I've been afraid of you for a very long time, Richard.
I signed a document I didn't understand because I was grieving and I trusted you and you used that." Her voice didn't shake.
"I'm not afraid of you anymore.
And I'd like you to leave my home."
Richard stood slowly.
He straightened his jacket.
"This isn't finished," he said.
"No," Evelyn agreed.
"It isn't.
But the part where you win — that part is finished."
He left without another word.
Gerald closed the door behind him.
The apartment was very quiet.
Then, from the hallway, my mother's voice: "Is he gone?"
"He's gone," Evelyn said.
My mother came into the kitchen in borrowed clothes, her hair loose, her feet bare on the floor.
She looked at Evelyn across the room.
"What did he say?"
"Everything I expected him to say." Evelyn picked up her coffee.
"And nothing that changes anything."
My mother crossed the kitchen and sat down at the table.
After a moment, Evelyn sat back down too.
I stayed in the doorway and watched them — two women at a kitchen table, twenty years of silence between them, and the morning light coming in through the window above the sink.
"I should have come to you sooner," my mother said.
"You came when you could." Evelyn wrapped both hands around her cup.
"You're here now."
May you like
Neither of them said anything else for a while.
They didn't need to.
