Widows-in-Law

by Michele W. Miller

  Nicole was a good storyteller with her razor-wire smile and impossibly white teeth—the whole package. But Lauren quickly had enough. She looked around for Emily.

  In the kitchen, Lauren spoke to Jessica’s back, “Have you seen Emily?”

  Jessica turned. “She’s outside. Her friends just left.”

  “Mr. Manley asked what we’re going to do.” Lauren pulled a chair from the antique oak table, reluctant, but needing to talk with Jessica. “I don’t know how she’s going to survive this, and I don’t know what to do about school.”

  Jessica sat. “We could keep her in school here.”

  Lauren looked in Jessica’s pale, devastated eyes. Lauren felt sad for her. But the idea of leaving Emily to live alone with Jessica was beyond a nightmare. Lauren sighed, forcing herself to face the situation. “I’m afraid of what will happen to her if I bring her back home, how she’ll react now that Brian’s … gone.”

  “Brian would have wanted her to stay at least through the school year. He was so happy with the improvement since she’s been here.”

  Was that a dig? Lauren tried to restrain the anger that tightened her face. Jessica acted as if Brian—and Jessica for that matter—had no part in causing Emily’s problems in the first place. She was like one of those crazy nurses who took credit for resuscitating a patient after she gave him poison.

  Jessica took in Lauren’s anger, her eyes widening, becoming wet.

  Oh, jeez. Lauren tried to soften the expression on her face. She hadn’t meant to hurt Jessica at a time like this. And if Lauren were honest with herself, she did care what Brian would have wanted. He was the father of her child, and he’d loved Emily. Although, without Brian, what was the reason for Emily living here, away from home?

  Lauren took a deep breath, thinking aloud. “Emily has bad judgment and she’s impulsive. In her traumatized state, God knows what will happen if I pull her out of school here and she comes home wanting to run wild with her friends again. Maybe I could move up here myself, but I’d have to find a new job—mine has a New York City residence requirement. And I’d need to sell the apartment.” Lauren wondered whether Brian had left money for her to take care of Emily, enough to risk leaving her job without having another lined up. “How could I move that quickly?”

  “Please, Lauren, I’m happy to keep her.”

  Lauren placed her face in her palms. Was Jessica capable of caring for Emily over the long haul? She was gung ho now, but Brian’s memory and desires would fade, and Jessica would soon become as self-absorbed as always. Yet could she rise to the challenge? And was there any choice? Lauren looked at Jessica, who waited expectantly, seeming to give Lauren a pass for acting as if Emily’s staying with her was as bad as waking up from a nightmare on Elm Street.

  “Okay, we’ll take it a day at a time,” Lauren said, “but if she could finish out the school year …”

  Jessica brightened. “It’s settled then.”

  Lauren smiled, bleakly. “She’s going to explode when she hears.” Emily was old enough to think she should have a choice in the matter. Not.

  Jessica sat back in her chair, appearing to dread telling Emily, too.

  A male voice cleared at the doorway. Both women looked up. Steve. The sleaze barometer hit the ceiling. Lauren barely restrained her eyes from rolling into her head. She was still burning from his eulogy.

  “I’m glad you’re both here,” he said, condescension already dripping from his voice. He sat down at the table across from Lauren, catty-corner from Jessica.

  “I’ve been downstairs going through Brian’s files and PC. I haven’t found a will.” He spoke to Jessica, “Do you know where he might have kept a hard copy, a safe-deposit box maybe?”

  “No. He didn’t keep a safe deposit,” Jessica said. “I don’t think a will was a top priority yet. He was always too busy.”

  Lauren knew what that meant. Brian had died intestate. It was basic estate law. Since there was no will, the first fifty thousand dollars of the estate would go to Jessica. Jessica and Emily would split the rest down the middle.

  Steve sat for a moment as if contemplating the significance of Jessica’s statement. “Well, he has a moderate IRA plus sixty thousand in the checking account. You have automatic deposit for the mortgage payments,” he said to Jessica. “Ninety-eight hundred a month. So you don’t have to worry about that. Your next real estate tax payment will be due in December. You can deal with that later too.”

  Lauren took in what Steve was saying. Brian had also been paying another thirty-five hundred a month to her, which covered her maintenance and mortgage. She barely netted that much a month at her job, so his payments were vital. She knew Brian and Jessica didn’t have much equity in the house. They’d bought it after the market had bounced back in Westchester, so the house wasn’t something that could be cashed in.

  “Fifteen hundred a month for the cars,” Steve said to Jessica. “You’re locked into leases on both of them.”

  “Three years,” Jessica said.

  “Two thousand dollars a month for the plane, hangar rental, and insurance—a three-year lease, too. No escape clause.”

  Lauren ticked it all off in her head and saw Jessica frown as if she were trying to do the same, addled by whatever medication she was taking. The amount of money Brian had in the bank wouldn’t keep Jessica in pantyhose let alone pay Brian’s debts and keep two households afloat for any length of time, at least not two households in Manhattan and Westchester County. The real estate taxes for a house like this in Chappaqua could easily be forty thousand dollars a year. Brian spent money like a drug dealer. “Fast money goes fast” was an expression people used to say in the streets. Jessica would need to downsize (until she found someone else’s husband to marry) but even downsized, it was only Brian’s share in the law firm that would provide for Emily and Jessica. Lauren, too.

  Aside from Lauren’s alimony, the divorce decree entitled her to 10 percent of Brian’s profits from his business. Now that there would be no alimony, that 10 percent of the value of Brian’s cases with Steve would be what would pay her mortgage. Lauren found herself literally sighing with relief as the thought occurred: Brian had several big cases that would settle over the next year or two. He’d told her about them. When he was traveling and had nothing better to do, he sometimes called to shoot the shit with her. He’d said his share of the contingency fees would be worth millions. Lauren took another look at Steve. Why was he acting as if the cash in Brian’s accounts was the extent of Brian’s estate?

  She didn’t ask. She didn’t want to put Steve on the spot on the day of Brian’s burial. This wasn’t the time to get into the weeds of the estate business. Steve had probably been talking about Jessica’s petty cash needs until they could officially settle the estate. He was Brian’s best friend, and it was only habit that made him speak like a cautious lawyer. She could call him at his office later in the week to talk about it.

  After a few rote words of comfort, Steve left them.

  Jessica put her hand on Lauren’s arm. “Don’t worry about money, Lauren. Brian and Steve have a couple of huge cases coming down the pike. We’ll all be okay. Brian was talking about retiring early when the fees came in, not that I really believed he’d stop working.”

  The kitchen door slammed open and the two Labradors rushed to their feet from under the table. A smell of cigarettes entered with Emily like Pig-Pen’s dirt cloud. Lauren felt a deep anxiety about it, as if she’d inhaled electric voltage with the tobacco stink. Emily’s darkly circled gray eyes were Brian’s for a moment. She appraised Jessica and Lauren with the same piercing intensity and hard-set, stubborn jaw as her father. She hugged herself and spoke pliantly in a tone that would only last for as long as she got the answers she wanted.

  She looked from Jessica to Lauren. “What’s going to happen to me now?”

  CHAPTER 6

 
Brian

  Eighteen Months Ago

  Cars honked in rush-hour traffic. Pedestrians moved faster on Park Avenue’s wide sidewalks than the vehicles. Behind potted plants, couples and groups of friends savored happy-hour tapas, drinks, and warm spring weather in a cathedral’s courtyard café. Brian walked uptown, returning from Grand Central Station where an adolescent techie had fixed his glitchy phone. He’d left his office for the errand between one of many drafts of motion papers he’d been writing, wanting to relax his eyes before pouring over the words one more time to make sure they were perfect. Pointedly ignoring his vibrating pocket, he swore off looking at his phone while he walked. He wanted just a moment to enjoy the warm breeze and blossoming cherry trees on the Park Avenue median. Their pink only lasted a couple of weeks before morphing to green. He tried to really take them in, not to get lost in his head thinking about all the tasks he needed to do.

  Brian stopped at a light, his phone vibrating again. He finally looked at it. A Facebook message on his home screen: Jordan Connors. Jordan was one of Brian’s hundreds of Facebook friends whose posts didn’t show up on his news feed. Neither of them had liked or shared each other’s posts in years, and they hadn’t seen each other since college. If Brian had wanted to find Jordan, he could, but he hadn’t the vaguest idea what the guy was up to.

  For Brian, social media was about business. Selfies and self-published books of his acquaintances didn’t interest him. But in case someone was in a plane crash or mass disaster, or knew anyone looking for a lawyer, Brian was a click away. From time to time, he got a case that way. He never failed to send Facebook birthday messages. For him, they were the modern version of the birthday postcards dentists snail-mailed as a checkup reminder.

  He looked at the message from Jordan: Can you give me a call? 917-555-2424. That was it, terse, no explanation. Brian would have expected some explanation from someone he hadn’t heard from in years. But Jordan was no regular guy, never had been.

  Brian and Jordan had gone to Queens College undergrad together, meeting because they’d lived in the same garden apartment complex on the outskirts of the commuter campus. Jordan was one of the smartest guys Brian knew, maybe smarter than Brian himself, and there weren’t many people Brian thought that about. Jordan could be a sarcastic asshole at times too, but he had been funny as shit, an encyclopedia of politics, history, video games, sports, you name it. Maybe Jordan had been too smart for his own good, dropping out of college just four months shy of graduation, the degree superfluous to Jordan even when he was so close to getting it.

  Brian remembered wishing he had Jordan’s courage. Brian went off to the safety of law school, while Jordan moved to Las Vegas like an Old West settler pursuing a gold rush.

  Waiting on the corner of Fifty-Second Street for another traffic light to change, Brian clicked onto Jordan’s telephone number.

  Jordan picked up after a ring. “Hello.”

  “Jordan, hey, it’s Brian.”

  “Brian, thanks for calling.”

  “It’s good to hear from you. How are things?”

  “I’m good. With people now and can’t talk, but, listen, my mother needs a lawyer.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “She had some shitty plastic surgery. I figured if there’s any shyster I can trust to get her a couple of bucks, it’s you.”

  Brian laughed, reminded of Jordan’s sharp-edged, born-and-bred New York attitude. It had always made Brian feel at home in a way he didn’t feel around his friends who’d transplanted themselves to New York after the Ivies. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m sorry to hear about that. What kind of injuries does she have?” Nerve damage was most likely, Brian thought, which could be permanently debilitating and an excellent payday if it weren’t for the age of the plaintiff here. She would be too old to feel the pain long enough to push the verdict into the millions.

  “Why don’t you stop by my place?” Jordan said. “I’m on Fifty-Seventh, only a few blocks from your office. I’ll be done with my meeting in fifteen if you’re free.”

  Brian didn’t have a reason to say no. Jessica didn’t expect him home. He worked sixty hours in a good week, so there were many unsupervised breaks, and his motion papers only needed one more read-through before he headed home for the day. He couldn’t help but be curious about Jordan. He’d been one of Brian’s degenerate college friends, enamored of cocaine and wild women, two of Brian’s favorite things about college. It was a side of Brian that few people knew about. He’d kept the different parts of his life sharply separated. And he’d sworn off all that when he started law school.

  But one thing he knew from that experience was that good genes had been the only thing separating Brian from becoming an addict. He had an addictive personality. He’d easily left the hard drugs alone after graduation, but leaving the women alone had been more challenging. The problem with Brian and women was that he never knew when an obsession with a woman might hit him. He could be going about his business, focused on nothing but work, friends, family when, out of nowhere, he’d meet a woman’s eyes or accidentally brush against her—even someone he already knew—and something about the connection would send him hurtling down the path to her bed.

  He’d managed to stay away from cheating on Jessica since they’d married. He loved her and was sick of hurting people. He felt as if the harm he’d caused Lauren and Emily had scarred him too. But underneath it all, he doubted he’d possess the inner strength to resist that spark when it happened again. The way the craving for a woman could sucker punch him, he fully understood what it meant to be a drug addict.

  Jordan had been a kindred spirit, enjoying a good party, although he probably lacked the baggage of a conscience that Brian had. But for all Brian knew, Jordan could have a paunchy wife and five kids by now. Brian walked to Fifty-Seventh Street, wondering if Jordan would live in one of the street’s few remaining rent-stabilized apartment buildings, or was he a denizen of the Fifty-Seventh Street known as Billionaire’s Row? The two realities were woven into the same street. Brian wanted the best for Jordan but he halfway hoped Jordan had ended up struggling, just to reassure Brian that he’d made the right call by going to law school and playing life safe.

  When Brian reached Jordan’s glass-walled building, its hundred stories casting a needle-thin shadow over Central Park, the answer became clear: Billionaire’s Row. A Cy Young Award–winning pitcher nodded to Brian and put on sunglasses as he passed, leaving the elevator as Brian entered.

  Ninety-two floors above, Jordan opened his apartment door, wearing jeans, sneakers, and a backward baseball cap, the uniform of an internet start-up guy. The two men hugged, slapping backs. Brian took in the wall of windows at the far end of a sleek living room. The apartment was socked in, surrounded by white cotton and moisture as if they were in an airplane flying through cumulus clouds.

  Jordan followed Brian’s gaze. “On a clear day, you can see all of Central Park plus Queens and Jersey. The view is never the same twice. The clouds and sky are always changing. Want a beer?”

  “Thanks.”

  “I see you traded in your jeans for Armani suits,” Jordan said, carrying cold Brooklyn Lagers from behind a bar.

  “It’s the uniform.” Brian noticed the clouds taking on a pink cast as an unseen sunset unfurled behind them. “Nice place.”

  “It’s a corporate apartment. I’ve got one here, one in the Hollywood Hills, another in South Beach.”

  Brian opened his beer. “Last I heard, you were in Las Vegas playing poker.”

  “Fifteen years ago I got eighty-sixed from the casinos for counting cards at blackjack. The casinos do everything they can to make it hard for a professional gambler to make a living. But getting eighty-sixed was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “How so?”

  “I ended up in Samara, Costa Rica, a little beach town on the Pacific coas
t, running an internet gambling site. I was at the right place at the right time.” Jordan grinned, “And here I be.”

  “Isn’t internet gambling still illegal?”

  “I’m cool. I’m set up in a country where it’s legal. I can’t process money transactions in the US, so our US bettors funnel their transactions through proper IP addresses. There’s plenty of money to be made within the legal constraints. As bullshit and protectionist as those constraints are.”

  “How do you get business?”

  “I advertise, mostly on sports news sites, and a lot of my business comes from agents who get a piece of the profits for each person they refer. I’ve also got a niche business that’s a big moneymaker. There’s a group of billionaires, Chinese, who love to gamble, mostly invitation-only poker games. I host and process the action. My business is perfectly legal if done right, and it captures a different market than the legal sports-betting casinos. But there are those who would begrudge me my goal of being rich without slaving to Wall Street.”

  “The Chinese government probably isn’t very fond of you,” Brian guessed. “Isn’t gambling illegal in China?”

  “I never step foot in China.” Jordan took a joint from an onyx box and lit it. “I’m not looking to do life in a reeducation camp for letting their baby billionaires gamble.”

  Brian accepted the joint and took a drag. “Do they even bother to reeducate foreigners?”

  “Ha, a very good question. I’m staying the fuck out of China, and all is good.”

  “Wow. I envy you,” Brian spoke smoke. “I’m up to my ass in pleadings, interrogatories, motions, chained to my desk most days. Pretty much seven days a week. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not whining.”