FOURTEEN
J
ane was once again sitting outside, in spite of the fact that every day became a little hotter as spring was getting ready to turn into full-blown summer weather. She was thinking about the talk with Todd earlier in the day. She hadn't especially wondered why Thelma hadn't taken Todd on her usual summer vacation for the last two years. If she had, she would have assumed Thelma simply thought she was getting too old to travel. Or that Todd was getting too old to go on trips with a grandmother.
No. That wouldn't play. Thelma wouldn't have thought about anyone but herself. So chalk it up to age.
All in all, it had been a good conversation and cleared up a lot of things. It allowed her to tattle to Todd aboutwhat his grandmother had said and tried to do to her in the last week without feeling guilty and whiny.
There was something else at the back of her mind that she'd been trying to grasp all day that finally emerged. It involved the next book she was writing. And the case of Miss Welbourne's death. But in reverse, so to speak.
A woman who had been in an accident and had already set up a trust for her children with a secondary trustee who was her cousin. How did she have enough money to do this, though? She had to be a widow and she'd inherited a lot of money from her deceased husband. She also had to keep her own substantial inheritance from her own parents.
The whole setup had to be convincing. How old were the children when her accident happened? How had it occurred? It was necessary for her to be in a near coma for a long enough time to justify that the cousin could take over managing the trust. And worse, how could she convince the reader that a woman could come out of a coma and remember her whole past?
Jane would have to start in her heroine's mind. Alert and intelligent as ever, but unable to speak or indicate (except from her eyes following someone in the room?) that her mind was still working.
Furthermore, her characters in her first two books, had elaborate and long names. This time she needed a down-home plain name. It couldn't be anything that started with a J, however. People who didn't know Jane well often
called her Janet, or Jean, or Joyce. She didn't want readers to mix up her real name with the character's name.
Martha? No, that was her sister Marty's real name and she couldn't love and sympathize with a Martha.
Ruth? Too biblical. Sarah? Also biblical, but a nice name. How about spelling it Sara? That would work. She'd known two Sarahs along the way through the many schools she'd gone to during her childhood who were called Sally by their friends. Sally was a more 'affectionate' name. At least as far as Jane was concerned.
She hadn't brought her legal pad out to jot down notes, so she ran inside for one, refreshed her iced tea, fetched a pencil, and went back to the patio table. The workers weren't making as much noise as they had in the early stages of the room addition. There was the occasional sound of a nail gun, or a request for another roll of the insulation they were putting in between the studs. They'd also learned to leave her alone. The Porta Potty, or whatever it was called, was on the far side of her house so none of them had to come into her house.
She supposed they thought of her as a weird writer who sat outside handwriting books. She wasn't writing a book, though. She was thinking out possibilities. Later she'd line all them up in no particular order on a file in her computer and soon begin to write the book.
She still needed a time setting. When did people begin the legal business of setting up trusts? She'd need to research that. She'd heard of trustbusters in history, long ago. The railroad barons used trusts, she suspected.
But those were big companies, not individuals. And it was probably before women could even vote. She'd let Sally settle it with a will instead.
And where would the story be set?
She found herself wanting to start the book, without worrying about chronology or legal matters. She went inside and sat down at her computer to write the first chapter.
Sally had her eyes closed and was thinking, 'I've been in this bed in the hospital for a year and one week. It's good that I had the sense not to let anyone know I could hear and see. Even though that was all I could do. Thank God for Lacy.'
Lacy had, after the first week that Sally was hospitalized, taken on responsibility for her. Lacy was young, tall, and strong and was the only one in the world who believed that Sally could recover. Three times every day she propped Sally up on pillows and hand fed her water and pulverized food. She'd also lift her carefully to the commode in the corner of the room when Sally needed it.
Sally would look at that part of the room as a signal to Lacy. Lacy was the only one who knew that Sally could see. And she knew, instinctively, that Sally didn't want anyone else to know. Lacy, after Maud's visit, also put a camp bed in Sally's room, so she could turn her during the night.
Lacy would bathe Sally once a day, and then gently
massage her arms and legs. What Lacy didn't know yet was that Sally was starting to feel through her fingertips and toes. Lacy's belief and care of her were working.
Sally's husband, who was also an orphan and the only child of rich parents, as was Sally, was killed on a skiing trip to Switzerland when he was buried in an avalanche. His body wasn't recovered until the spring thaw. Their children were young. Bobby was only two on his last birthday, and Amanda was four and a half. Knowing that her husband's life had been taken away too soon, she wrote a will, giving her substantial inheritance from her own parents over to her cousin Maud. Sally had no brothers or sisters and only one cousin.
Sally's inheritance from her late husband was also generous, but she held that back in the will for the welfare and education of her children. And her own welfare in the future.
During her widowhood, Sally had left the children with their nanny while Sally went to buy groceries one day, and was attacked by a purse snatcher. He'd hit her in the back with something like a pipe to knock her down. She only knew this because Lacy told her when she was sent from the hospital to the nursing home.
Her memory of Maud's first visit was still clear in her mind. Maud had come to the nursing home a month after Sally had been moved there and tried to convince the doctor that he should write up a document saying that Sally would never recover and Maud herself should have
Sally's late husband's money as well to raise Bobby and Amanda.
The doctor refused. 'She's probably not ever going to recover, but she's healthy except for the spinal injury. She can swallow food and water, she can evacuate her bowels. Her heart is healthy. Her blood pressure is normal.'
'But she's a vegetable and always will be,' Maud claimed. 'And she's stuck me with her children.'
'What are you suggesting?' the doctor asked. 'That we put her down like a seriously injured pet?'
'Why not?' Maud said. 'She'll never be able to get out of that bed on her own. And I need more money to take care of her children.'
'She'd have to make a new will for that to be done,' the doctor said and then he took her arm and added, 'Go away and never come back here. I'm going to see if I can find someone more honorable to take care of her children.'
As it happened, after she left, he reflected that he was bound to the conditions of Sally's will as well. He couldn't place her children anywhere else any more than Maud could get her hands on Sally's late husband's money.
But after that visit, Lacy moved a camp bed into Sally's room, to make sure Maud didn't sneak back in and do harm to Sally. Lacy felt that Maud would do anything to get rid of Sally and claim not only Sally's money, but that of Sally's late husband.
