“Difficult.”
I looked at my father — sixty-three, in the suit he wore to the fun*ral, in a courthouse hallway, holding a petition he’d signed without reading — and I found, to my surprise, that the word did not land anywhere.
“Yes,” I said.
“Nana counted on it.”
Recess ended.
Gil Farrow, to his credit, tried to recover.
He argued that professional standing did not preclude undue influence, that a JAG officer would be “uniquely positioned” to manipulate an elderly relative, that the very sophistication I had just revealed was “the point.”
It was not a bad argument.
It was the argument I would have made.
And it would have worked, on a different file.
“Your Honor,” I said, when he sat down, “the petition alleges undue influence over a period of two years.
I’d like the record to reflect where I was for those two years.”
I handed the clerk a single page.
“Deployment orders.
USS Ashland.
Twenty-two months at sea.
I saw my grandmother twice in that period, both times in a port call with a chaplain present, both times for less than four hours.”
“I’d also like to submit Exhibit D.”
“Which is?”
“My grandmother’s capacity evaluation.
Video.
Recorded by Dr. Eleanor Voss, geriatric psychiatrist, twenty-three months before her passing.
I was in the Pacific.
The petitioners were, according to their own calendar, at a resort in Scottsdale.”
The judge looked at Farrow.
Farrow looked at my parents.
My parents, for the first time in my life, looked at each other the way two people do when each has just realized the other one didn’t read the file.
“And Your Honor,” I said, “there’s an Exhibit E.
A sealed letter.
My grandmother’s instructions were that it be opened only if her will was contested, and only in the presence of the people contesting it.”
“I’d like it opened now.”
“They’re present.”
PART 3
The judge did not open it that day.
He adjourned, because he was a careful man, and because Gil Farrow had asked for time to “review materials counsel had not previously appreciated,” which is what a lawyer says when his clients have lied to him.
So the letter waited a week.
It was not a quiet week.
Lindsay called first.
My sister.
Thirty-six, married well, and the family’s designated messenger.
“Caro.
Okay.
Nobody knew about the Navy thing.
That’s on you, honestly, but — fine.
Mom’s a wreck.
Dad’s not sleeping.
Can we just — can you drop it?
Split it.
Four ways.
Nana would’ve wanted the family together.”
“Nana wrote a will, Linds.
She was pretty specific about what she wanted.”
“She was eighty-six when she wrote it.”
“With a psychiatrist on video.”
Silence.
“Caro, please.
Brett’s got the twins.
Mom and Dad — the house — you don’t know what’s been going on.”
“Then tell me.”
She didn’t.
She said, “Just let it go,” and hung up.
Brett called Wednesday.
He didn’t ask me to let it go.
He asked, very quietly, whether I knew about “the loans.”
“What loans?”
“Never mind.”
“Brett.”
“Nana’s letter, Caro.
Just — read it before you decide what you think of them.”
Uncle Ray — my father’s brother, the family’s soft one — called Thursday, and said the thing somebody always says.
“He’s your father, honey.
