Chapter 3
“I know who you are,” my father said, and the edge in his voice had returned. “What I don’t understand is why a lawyer is standing in my daughter’s hospital room at ten o’clock at night.”
“Because I asked him to be here,” I said.
“For what?”
“To update my estate plan.”
Mom gave a small disbelieving laugh, waiting for someone to reveal the joke.
Nobody did.
“Dr. Patel examined me at eight o’clock and documented that I’m fully alert and of sound mind,” I said. “A notary was present. Two hospital staff members witnessed my signature. Julian was very careful. He didn’t want anyone to be able to question any of it later.”
“Question it?” my father said. “Question what, exactly?”
Julian opened the folder but looked at me before speaking. I nodded.
“Effective tonight,” he said evenly, “you are no longer named as beneficiaries in any of Miranda’s estate documents. Your daughter Lauren is also removed. The trusts that were set aside for Lauren’s future children have been dissolved. Your access to Miranda’s emergency accounts has been closed, and the foundation’s board has been notified that the two seats reserved for you are vacant.”
Mom dropped into the visitor’s chair as if her knees gave way.
“The lake house,” she said faintly.
“Remains Miranda’s,” Julian said. “She’ll decide what to do with it.”
“Over a phone call,” my father said. His voice rose. “You’re doing this over a phone call.”
“Nine,” I said.
“Fine! Nine! We’re human beings, Miranda. We make mistakes. We are your parents. We gave you everything.”
Something inside me suddenly went still. Not anger. More like the quiet at the center of a storm after you’ve stopped fighting it.
“You gave me a roof,” I said, “and dinner, and school clothes, and I have always been grateful for those. I mean that. But you didn’t give me everything, Dad. You gave everything to Lauren, and you told me I was lucky because I never needed it.”
“That’s not true.”
“When I was eleven, I won the county science fair. You came for the first twenty minutes, and then you left because Lauren had a dance recital across town. I took the ribbon home on the bus.”
“We couldn’t be in two places at once,” my mother said, tears starting now.
“When I graduated from college with honors, you left before the ceremony ended because Lauren had called, crying about a boyfriend. Do you remember which boyfriend? I don’t. I don’t think you do either.”
Mom cried harder. Dad stared down.
“When I built my company, when I worked eighty hour weeks for six years, you told your friends I was ‘lucky with timing.’ When I sold it, the first thing Mom asked me, at my own celebration dinner, was whether I’d be helping Lauren with her down payment.”
