“Okay, but you know your mom’s not going to go for that.”
“I don’t care! I don’t care! She’s like a jailor! Thinks there’s drugs at the school and now she hates Harley!”
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “What happened? She doesn’t hate your friend.”
“I just went over there for the ceremony. The grandma’s ashes, because Harley was freaked out and so I was there for her. And Emma? The aunt? Who’s kind of messed up but really nice? She was very serious about it, and so we were there and it was . . . cool. And I’m glad I went, but I should never have told her!”
Cooper asked a few more questions until he understood fully what she was saying. He tried to calm Marissa down, with limited success, until he said he would talk to Laura himself, although what he could possibly say that would cut any ice with her was anyone’s guess. Laura was strung a bit tightly, and Marissa attending a ceremony whereby Jamie and Emma spread their mother’s ashes would be way too strange for a lot of people, doubly so for Laura.
He called Laura as soon as he got back to his house. She answered on the first ring, but upon hearing that Marissa had called him, hoping for a savior, she gave him a blistering piece of her mind, told him to “butt out of our lives,” and hung up.
Never, he thought. He and Marissa had bonded as much as if she were his own child. But he didn’t need to antagonize Laura, even though her attitude pissed him off. Instead, he pored over the events that took place before and after the attack on Emma. He went to bed late and dreamed of Jamie.
* * *
Monday morning, Jamie got Harley off to school and Emma to the Thrift Shop and then hurried back to the house and got ready for her meeting with her mother’s lawyer, Elgin DeGuerre. His office was in River Glen’s downtown area, a square lined with maple trees that had already lost most of their leaves, on the second floor of a red-brick, renovated building. A set of double glass doors led to the building’s lobby. Jamie pushed through and saw the signs that indicated the DeGuerre Law Firm was up the stairs, or there was an elevator down the hall. Jamie peered down the short hallway and saw doors on either side with an elevator bank on the left. There was a sharp corner at the end, but she could see through a glass window into an anteroom with an abundance of ferns.
She climbed the stairs, and directly in front of her was the entrance to DeGuerre’s office. Faux marble columns flanked a windowed door with a pane with pebbled glass that displayed Elgin DeGuerre’s name in scripted, gold paint.
Jamie let herself into a small anteroom with four chairs. There was a reception desk, but no one seated behind it. Several doors marched along the left side of the room, also with pebbled glass, running alongside the reception desk and disappearing down the hall. As Jamie considered ringing the bell on the desk, she saw a figure move behind the obscured glass of the nearest door. The door opened, and a man in his midforties appeared. Jamie didn’t think this could be Elgin DeGuerre, who’d been her mother’s lawyer for many years, but she looked at him expectantly, nevertheless.
He smiled and came toward her, hand outstretched. “Hello, you must be Irene Whelan’s daughter.”
She nodded as she shook his hand. “Jamie Whelan Woodward. I have an appointment with Mr. DeGuerre.”
“I’m David Musgrave. I don’t know if you knew that Mr. DeGuerre is retiring and I’m taking over the practice.”
“Oh. No, I didn’t.”
“I’ll be sitting in on the meeting, if that’s okay?”
“Sure.”
With that, he led her to an inner office at the back end of a short hall. As she entered, she saw it took up the full width of the building and had a view out the windows toward Mt. Hood, its snow-capped top just peeking above a line of clouds whose soft gray color and fluffiness gave them the look of a row of pussy willows.
Elgin DeGuerre was white-haired and slightly stooped, but a pair of lively gray eyes assessed Jamie from head to toe. “You look like your mother,” he said as he shook hands and exchanged greetings with her.
“Most people say I look like my sister.”
“I knew your mother when she was young. And your father.” He gestured for her to take a seat. “We’re without a receptionist right now as Amy’s on vacation. Would you like a glass of water? Or coffee, tea?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Then, let’s get to it.”
DeGuerre looked to Musgrave, who outlined the details of Jamie’s mother’s estate, which were in surprisingly good order. Jamie had been named as personal representative and beneficiary, with the caveat that Emma be provided for, though that was not specifically laid out. There was a sealed, manila envelope in the file with Jamie’s name and Los Angeles address handwritten on its face in her mother’s handwriting. Musgrave handed it to her, and Jamie grasped it with nerveless fingers, her heart suddenly pounding hard. DeGuerre appeared to have checked out.
“You can read it later,” David Musgrave said, understanding what she was feeling. “I wasn’t sure whether we were supposed to mail it to you, but when we reached you and you said you were coming home, we decided to wait. Your mother was wise, putting her assets in a living trust, so there’ll be no probate.”
The estate consisted of the house, which had the mortgage paid off, a small IRA, which named Emma as the beneficiary, Mom’s aging Outback, and a checking account with several thousand dollars that already
