“First of all, Mrs. Marist,” he says in a deep baritone, “I would like to express my regret for not detecting the egregious fraud perpetrated on you and my client, Laurel Hobbes. If I’d known—”
“All you had to do was visit her in the mental hospital,” I say, angry less on my own behalf than on Laurel’s. “You would have seen I’m not her.”
“Yesss.” He draws out the word as if it contained multitudinous meanings and interpretations. “I meant to visit, but I was away and I had no reason to suspect foul play. Laurel was acting erratic and unstable when she came to see me the week before her disappearance.”
“Before her death, you mean. What do you mean by erratic and unstable?”
“She wanted to change the terms of her will, but she refused to tell me the basis for the change. She seemed unwell and . . . well, frankly, paranoid.”
“Her husband was drugging her and plotting to put her away in a mental hospital to take control of her money. Did it occur to you that she might have grounds to be suspicious?”
“Well, I did consult her husband . . .”
“Great,” I say, “an impartial source.”
“And who else would you have had me consult, Mrs. Marist?” He’s stern now, annoyed by my tone. “You have to remember that Laurel had a history of mental illness and had been unstable since the birth of her daughter. She was clearly suffering from some kind of postpartum mood disorder. And then her request . . . well, it was very unusual.”
I swallow the remarks I’d like to make about Jones-Barrett’s diagnostic abilities and ask instead, “What was so unusual about it?”
“She wanted to change the trustee in charge of Chloë’s trust. To remove Stan and place someone else in the position, someone I had no knowledge of . . . in short, she named you as Chloë’s guardian and executor of the trust.”
“Me!” I am sure I have misheard him. Laurel hardly knew me, and from the journal entries I read she didn’t even think all that well of me.
“Yes, well, you can see why I questioned her judgment. No offense. A woman she’d only known for a few months, whom she’d met in a support group, a woman with her own history of emotional problems—”
“How did you know that?” I ask. I do not say that, in my opinion, the qualifier “no offense” is usually followed by offensive comments.
“I spoke with Stan. He told me that your husband had mentioned that you’d tried to kill yourself after your daughter’s birth.”
“I didn’t,” I say. “Peter just tried to make me believe I had.”
Jones-Barrett shrugs. “How was I to know? At any rate, despite my reservations I complied with Laurel’s request.”
“You did? But why? If you thought she was crazy and I was unfit . . .”
“I thought . . . well, frankly, I didn’t think the issue would come up. I also assumed once Laurel had recovered her senses she would change her will again. But I’m also not in the business of going against my clients’ wishes. I see a lot of troubling behavior in my line of work . . . although perhaps none as troubling as the behavior of your husband . . . and if I started choosing whose orders to follow and whose not . . . well, I wouldn’t be in business very long. Laurel chose you as Chloë’s guardian. When I asked her why, she said it was because you were a good mother and she trusted you to take care of Chloë.” He pauses, as if expecting me to say something, but I find that I can’t. Not unless I want to blubber in front of this patrician man. After a moment he nods as if I had spoken. “In any event, she was proven correct. You took Chloë with you. You made sure she was safe.”
Leaving my own child behind, I want to say, and then giving Chloë up when I wound up in a mental institution.
“Where is she now?” I finally manage.
“In a foster home. I will await your instructions for her care as soon as you are able to advise me.”
“And if I don’t . . . if I don’t think I can take care of her?” My head is swimming. Before all this began, I could barely manage one baby, never mind two.
“Then she will be made a ward of the state and appointed a guardian. There are funds to take care of her—plenty of money, actually . . . though as we can see by Laurel’s upbringing, money alone doesn’t guarantee a high level of care. Sometimes it’s just the thing to bring out the worst in people. But the decision is yours.” He picks up his briefcase and stands up. I struggle to stand too, but he puts out his hand to indicate I shouldn’t bother. “Save your strength,” he says. “You’ll need it. Good day, Mrs. Marist.”
I sit in the solarium, frozen despite the warm sun coming in through the windows. How could you? I ask Laurel. How could you leave me with this decision? What made you think I could handle this?
I wait for a response for so long that the sun moves across the room, climbs a wall, and vanishes. I wait long enough to know that Laurel isn’t going to answer, that she has said all she has to say to me. Of course I’ll take Chloë, I say to her, I’ll raise her like she’s my own. I don’t need to hear Laurel’s voice to know what she would say if she were here.
Edith’s Journal, December 12, 1971
Nurse Landry took me and the baby and Libby to the hospital, where Libby’s father Dr. Bennett has been taking care of us. He’s been very kind. When I told him I wanted to finish writing in my journal he asked Nurse Landry to go back to the dorm and bring it to me. He let me write down everything that happened and now he’s letting me
