Part Four: The Formula
Walter read the redistribution with the same precise neutrality.
Thirty percent of the primary estate to the Mitchell Foundation. Thirty percent to the employee pension fund, which Richard had established and which was the most important thing, in Eleanor’s view, that he had ever done with his money. Thirty percent to Charlotte, who received this information with the expression of someone who has been handed something they did not ask for and are not sure how to hold. Ten percent to Eleanor.
And Thomas received his father’s first desk — a folding card table that Richard had bought at a secondhand store in Baltimore in 1979 and that he had kept in his study for forty years — and a set of books. Ethics, philosophy, biography. The books of a man who had kept reading because he kept believing that understanding was available to anyone willing to pursue it.
Thomas looked at the card table.
He looked at Eleanor.
“This is a punishment,” he said.
“It’s a consequence,” she said.
“You waited until he couldn’t defend himself.”
“He prepared this before he died,” she said. “He anticipated you. He recorded his reasoning. Walter has the files.”
Thomas looked at Walter, who nodded without expression.
“He wasn’t angry,” Eleanor said. “He was clear. There’s a difference.”
Thomas left without saying anything further. He left the way people leave when they are converting something they feel into something they plan to do, and Eleanor had known him long enough to know what that meant.
