OTHER TITLES BY C.E. TOBISMAN
Doubt
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Cynthia E. Tobisman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503942028
ISBN-10: 1503942023
Cover design by David Drummond
For Dad, who proved the generation-skipping transfer tax is interesting.
Sort of.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
TWO MONTHS LATER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
On some days, Caroline disliked being a lawyer. Today was one of them.
She eyed the front of The Pastures Assisted Living.
The low-slung building had a wide, circular driveway. Good for ambulances. Good for hearses. A cheerful array of topiary hedges shaped like chickens bordered the entryway.
Caroline had visited the home many times, but this would be her last. As the only lawyer in the family, she had the unhappy errand of closing her grandmother’s affairs. It wasn’t the task she loathed. It was the finality it symbolized.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the sliding glass doors.
Morning light streamed through the windows, casting bright squares on the newly laid laminate floors. As always, Nancy Feinstein sat in a wheelchair beside the social lounge, her sharp eyes surveying all the comings and goings of her confined world.
“Oh, honey, let me give you a hug,” she said when she saw Caroline. “I’m so devastated about your grandmother. Kate and I were watching movies together just last week. She seemed fine, other than the IV. And the walker. And whatnot.”
“She looked okay to me, too,” agreed Caroline. The fact that her most recent visit had been over a month ago hung between them, but thankfully Nancy said nothing about it.
“Can I help you with that sock?” Caroline crouched in front of the wheelchair.
“Thank you, honey, but you don’t need to do that. The caregivers here are all so solicitous. They’re pushy, if you ask me.” The elderly woman’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t trust them.”
Caroline smiled as she pulled up the offending sock. Nancy always saw a conspiracy.
Caroline didn’t admit it aloud, but she did, too, lately. Where once she’d given strangers the benefit of the doubt—innocent until proven guilty—she now began from a firm presumption of guilt. It wasn’t healthy or fair, but she couldn’t stop. In the year since she’d left her first job out of law school, she hadn’t stopped wrestling with the betrayals that had forced her departure.
“I’m sure the staff is just trying to be friendly,” Caroline said, feeling like a hypocrite for trying to talk Nancy out of her paranoia.
“Is that Miss Caroline I hear?” came a man’s deep voice from down the hall.
The owner of the voice soon followed. Harold DuBois, the administrator of the nursing home. He held out one arm for a businesslike hug.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Come on down to my office. We’ll get you all sorted out.”
While Caroline waited in a guest chair, Harold leaned over his file cabinet. His fingers strolled slowly through the alphabetized names.
“If you’re looking for my grandmother’s will, I have it here.” Caroline pulled a thick ream of papers from her bag. The will had been prepared by an estate planner shortly after Grandma Kate had moved into The Pastures. Anticipating the need for the hard-copy original, Caroline had brought it along with her.
But Harold shook his head. “Our policy requires us to retain copies of our residents’ wills and health care directives if signed after they join us. We have to use our own copies.”
“Do you have it digitized?” Caroline asked.
Harold chuckled. “I know you love all of that tech stuff, but we’re in the Dark Ages here. Don’t you worry—this won’t take more than another few minutes.”
Caroline exhaled. She didn’t have “another few minutes.” In less than an hour, she was supposed to be at her grandmother’s funeral. There, she’d see her mother and uncle for the first time in three months. Her unstable mother and her alcoholic uncle.
Upon further reflection, Caroline decided perhaps being late wouldn’t be so bad.
Finally, Harold pulled a folder from the file cabinet.
He held it aloft, victorious, before spreading it open on his desk.
“Our residents assign their assets to The Pastures to pay for their care,” he began. “If there’s anything left over when they die, they can bequeath it to whomever they wish.”
“I understand,” said Caroline. “My grandma has about $97,000 in the bank. Other than that, the only thing of value is a watch. It’s an heirloom. It’s covered in paragraph 25(d) of her will—Personal Effects.”
Harold lifted a single sheet of paper from the file on his desk.
“I don’t see any paragraph 25(d) here,” he said, squinting at the page.
Caroline’s brow wrinkled as she compared the large document on her lap to the small one in Harold’s hand.
“That’s her will?”
“It is,” Harold confirmed. “It’s handwritten,” he added, although Caroline could see that for herself. Blue ink bled in dots through the thin paper.
“When did she write it?”
Harold squinted again at the document. “Five weeks ago.”
“My grandma never said anything about wanting to redo her will,” Caroline said halfway to herself. “What does it say?”
“Let’s see here . . . it looks like your grandma has left her estate to Oasis Care,” Harold said.
“What?” Caroline asked. She wasn’t sure she’d heard right.
Harold offered the page to Caroline so she could read it for herself.
Caroline quickly scanned the page. The writing was shaky, but the loops and dips were distinct. Kate had definitely written it. There were no signatures by any witnesses, but that didn’t matter. So long as a will was written in the maker’s handwriting, it was enforceable.
Law school had been full of stories of handwritten—or holographic—wills. A farmer who’d been trapped under his tractor had scratched his will into the fender: “In case I die in this mess, I leave all to the wife.” A court had probated the fender, giving it the full effect of the law.
Now, Caroline’s gaze s
ettled on the most unexpected part of the document.
“What’s Oasis Care?”
“They’re a charity,” answered Harold. “Some of our residents make gifts to them—and other charities, too.”
The explanation did not calm Caroline’s concerns. Her grandmother had suffered from progressive dementia. Even if Oasis was a perfectly lovely charity, her grandmother had never mentioned it before.
“Can you tell me how my grandma came to change her mind about her will in the last month of her life?” Caroline asked.
“I don’t know.” Harold shrugged apologetically. “We discourage our residents from writing their own wills, but there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
Caroline tried to consider her grandmother’s bequest dispassionately. Throughout her life, Grandma Kate had supported charitable causes—sometimes with volunteer time, sometimes with money. Although it seemed strange that Kate would become enamored with Oasis to the exclusion of her own heirs, it wasn’t impossible.
“Okay, so she left her money to a charity,” Caroline said, trying to accept the words as she spoke them, since she had no way to prove they weren’t true. “But I still need to make sure I’m getting the watch.” In a family of few things, the heirloom was special. Her grandmother might’ve left her bank account to charity. But not the watch. Never the watch.
“I’m sorry, but your grandmother didn’t make any separate gifts of personal property,” Harold said. “That means everything goes to Oasis.”
Heat rose to Caroline’s face.
“Perhaps she made a mistake,” Harold offered weakly.
Caroline prized restraint. It was an attribute she appreciated after growing up with a mother who sometimes had none. And so she knew her emotions showed only in the tightening of her mouth, the quick flash of pain in her eyes. Subtle things, really. But things that Harold, who was skilled and schooled at helping people with grief, evidently perceived.
“This watch, it matters an awful lot to you, doesn’t it, Miss Caroline?” he asked.
“It does,” Caroline croaked. Letting go of the money was difficult. Letting go of the watch was impossible.
A thoughtful expression crossed Harold’s face. He tapped his lips with an index finger. “As I am sitting here, it occurs to me that I have not yet seen an inventory of your grandmother’s room. If you’d like to go see her things one last time, I’ve got some work I need to do.”
He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.
Caroline rose from her chair and hurried to the door.
“Thank you,” she said, casting a grateful look at the administrator. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem,” said Harold, turning his attention to other matters of pressing importance.
When Caroline arrived at her grandmother’s room, she found a certified nursing assistant folding a quilt. The woman’s red hair was plaited in a long braid. Around her neck, she wore a leather-corded necklace with a peace symbol that dangled to just above the V collar of her pink scrubs. Even in the typical attire for a CNA, the woman looked like a New Age hippie.
She stopped midmotion, the quilt hanging from her arms.
“I’m Kate Hitchings’s granddaughter,” Caroline introduced herself.
“Granddaughter?” The woman’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know Kate had any family.”
“She did.” Caroline looked down, the embers of guilt flaring again in her chest. “I used to come every week, but I started my own law firm a year ago. My cases have been keeping me super busy lately.” She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to explain her absence to this stranger. Perhaps because her grandmother wasn’t around to explain it to.
“I’m Patricia.” The woman extended a hand.
As she shook it, Caroline noted the tattoo circling Patricia’s wrist. A string of characters in some other language. Maybe Sanskrit.
“That’s my mantra,” Patricia said. “The heart of the lotus is within.”
“That’s nice,” Caroline said absently as she examined the room for places where her grandmother might have stashed the watch.
“I was just organizing Kate’s stuff,” Patricia said. “Harold wants me to put together an inventory.” She gestured with her chin toward a tablet sitting atop the bedside table.
“Thanks so much for doing that,” Caroline said, trying to keep her tone neutral. Hopefully Patricia would just assume she was inventorying Kate’s belongings for Kate’s family. “I’m looking for a watch my grandma wanted me to have. I was going to bring it to the funeral.”
“A watch?” Patricia echoed. “I don’t remember Kate wearing a watch.”
“She never wore it. It’s a man’s watch, actually,” Caroline said. “You’d know it if you saw it. It has a big, square face and a green glass crystal.”
“I haven’t seen anything like that,” Patricia said, turning back to folding the quilt. “But feel free to look around.”
Caroline sat down on the bed and opened the drawer of the bedside table.
Inside, she found an assortment of objects. A deck of cards. A zippered pouch fashioned from bright-green Guatemalan fabric. Some holiday cards. But no watch.
She opened the pouch and withdrew a pile of pictures.
The first showed Kate, crouching beside an Irish setter.
“Was that her dog?” Patricia’s voice came from behind Caroline.
Caroline nodded. “His name was Winston. He was a great dog. Big as a moose.”
“I have a dog, too,” Patricia said. “A little one.”
Caroline flipped to the next image. A brown-haired boy in long plaid shorts stood with his arm around a skinny boy with large black eyes and sallow skin.
“Who’s that?” Patricia asked.
“My uncle Hitch,” Caroline said, tapping the boy in plaid shorts. “And this was Nazim.” She tilted her head toward the sallow-skinned boy beside Uncle Hitch. “He was my uncle’s best friend . . . until he died,” she finished softly.
“What happened?” Patricia asked.
“Congenital heart defect. My uncle was devastated, as you can imagine. The whole story’s really sad. Nazim fled the Algerian War with his grandfather. They barely got out. Poor kid survived that, only to die a few years later.”
Patricia nodded, her green eyes filled with sympathy.
“Actually, the watch I’m looking for came from Nazim’s grandfather,” Caroline said. “My grandma took in Rayan Hafaz after his grandson died. She gave him a place to live. She took care of him. The watch was his prized possession. He left it to my grandparents when he passed away.”
“I could tell your grandma was special,” Patricia said, her voice solemn. “In fact, I was thinking just the other day that it kind of makes sense she’d pass away on September 11. I mean, it’s already sort of a messed-up day, so of course a lady as nice as your grandmother would leave us on it, right?”
Caroline smiled sadly at the caregiver’s sentimental logic.
“I’ve got to go,” Caroline said, rising to her feet. “Can’t be late for the funeral.”
She tucked the pouch of pictures into her bag.
Then she reached out to close the drawer of the bedside table.
But then she noticed something: a receipt. Yellow and crumpled, the small piece of paper was lodged in the corner of the drawer.
She tugged it loose and read: REGAL WATCH REPAIR.
The write-up showed that a Mrs. Katherine Hitchings had dropped off an “antique watch” for “annual cleaning and servicing” two months earlier.
Caroline’s heart began to pound.
The watch wasn’t gone. It was at a repair shop, just waiting to be claimed.
The hours of operation at the bottom of the receipt showed the shop was open all day.
That meant she could pay a visit after the funeral.
As she folded the receipt to put it in her bag, Caroline noted Patricia’s eyes on it.
But before the caregiver could ask any questions, Caroline
hurried out the door.
The scent of freshly dug earth hung heavy around the gravesite.
The elderly attendees stood in respectful silence. Hands clasped. Heads bowed. Quietly contemplating their own mortality, the ephemeral nature of existence, or what would be served for lunch later at the nursing home.
A rainbow of scrubs-clad helpers shadowed them like a United Nations of underpaid guardian angels. All stood, awaiting the moment when they would climb back into the van bearing the italicized logo of The Pastures Assisted Living, Chatsworth. The only exceptions were a middle-aged man and woman standing twenty feet away, across the grave from Caroline.
Even with her eyes trained safely on the grass, Caroline could tell things were as worrisome as ever with her relatives. Her uncle had tried to clean up for his mother’s funeral. His rumpled shirt smelled recently laundered. His hair didn’t spring from the sides of his head like weeds. Yet despite his efforts, Uncle Hitch still looked like the homeless man he was.
Next to him, Caroline’s mother toyed incessantly with her bracelet, her fingers jerky as they skittered through the links. Mania. Caroline knew the signs. Her mom had taken her meds with enough regularity to move to Portland with her boyfriend, but Caroline knew the cycle. Joanne would cut back on her mood stabilizers and the sine wave of her psyche would become steeper, its peaks and valleys curving into the Danger Zone. And then the rages would come.
None of it was her problem, Caroline reminded herself. She was an adult, with all the trappings of independence that connoted. Bank account. Profession. Apartment. None was large, but all provided separation from her relatives. Caroline knew their illnesses weren’t their fault, but the effects were unavoidable: she didn’t depend on family.
Except for Grandma Kate, Caroline amended. In a family full of doctor-stumping psychopathologies, Kate had been as reliable as the rising sun.
Caroline forced herself to look again at her mother and uncle. Kindling some spark of connection with them would be a fitting tribute to the great woman who had passed on.
And so, when the priest concluded the service, Caroline gathered her resolve.
“Beautiful service,” she said, approaching her relatives.
Proof (Caroline Auden Book 2) Page 1