The Living Room

by Robert Whitlow

  “That’s surprising considering how messy the meeting was. Print the notes and give me a copy before you go upstairs.”

  Amy pointed to a stack of papers on the corner of Mr. Phillips’s desk.

  “They’re in there. Do you want me to pull them out?”

  “No.” Mr. Phillips waved his hand. “But check back with me before you leave to go home.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Amy took a steno pad with her. She didn’t know formal short-hand but had developed her own style of abbreviations that worked well if she didn’t wait too long to transcribe them. The door to Chris’s office was open. He motioned for her to come in and sit down. His face didn’t reveal any emotion.

  “Did you get a chance to watch the DVD and transcribe the CD in the Dominick will case?”

  “I watched the DVD this afternoon and made a few notes but haven’t listened to the CD. I’ll try to get to it tomorrow.”

  “It’s more of the same. What did you think of the video?”

  “Since I don’t remember anything that happened before the camera started recording, I can’t help out there. Mr. Dominick came to the office off and on for years, so I was around him quite a few times. He was a smart but impulsive man. It was obvious in the video that he was declining.”

  “Mentally?”

  “Yes.” Amy nodded. “His mind was jumping all over the place.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”

  “But he knew Natasha was his wife and wanted to leave most of his estate to her.”

  “That’s the only part Mr. Phillips focused on. He thinks the video will prove the case. I’m not so sure.”

  Amy decided to take a chance and offer a perspective on the senior partner.

  “Mr. Phillips knows there are issues in the case. Saying that to you is his way of putting pressure on you to deliver what he wants.”

  “I already feel it.” Chris touched a brown mailer on his desk. “And this didn’t help. I received a packet of information today from a Georgia lawyer who represents a man claiming to be Dominick’s illegitimate son.”

  “Mr. Dominick had a reputation as a womanizer.”

  “This is the third notice that has floated in from illegitimate children—two putative sons and one putative daughter,” Chris said.

  “Has there been any DNA testing?”

  “Dominick was embalmed using formaldehyde, which contaminates any sample. One of the claimants wants to have him exhumed anyway. Another is seeking hair and fingernail samples. Natasha isn’t very happy with either request.”

  Mr. Dominick had a full head of snow-white hair in the DVD. If there was a hairbrush of his remaining in the house, it would be a treasure trove of chromosomal data.

  “Can they search the house?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure, but the illegitimate offspring don’t pose the only challenge to the will. There are also caveats from two of his legitimate children.” Chris paused. “And a competing will supposedly executed after the one prepared by Mr. Phillips.”

  “What a mess.”

  “That’s what happens when twenty million dollars is at stake.”

  “Twenty million dollars?” Amy raised her eyebrows. “I had no idea there was that much money involved. Where did it come from? I knew Mr. Dominick owned a couple of houses, but I never knew how he made his money. He spent most of his time being a war hero.”

  “The majority of his assets are from an import/export business he started after he got back from the war. His main job was to schmooze with clients. Apparently, he was very good at it.”

  It was slightly past five o’clock when Amy left Chris’s office and walked downstairs. She went in to see Mr. Phillips.

  “You wanted to see me before I left for the day?” she asked.

  “Yes.” The older lawyer motioned for her to sit down. “I saw Mildred Burris when I was eating lunch at the country club today. She mentioned that you’ve been spending time with her.”

  “Yes, I’ve visited her a couple of times in the past month or so.”

  Mr. Phillips cleared his throat. “Now that you’re working here again, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  Amy’s mouth dropped open. “Why? She’s been extremely kind to me.”

  “I don’t want to jeopardize client confidentiality or have an appearance of impropriety.”

  “I would never say something to Ms. Burris or anyone else that violates the rules. We talk about our faith, not what happens here.” Amy paused. “And she’s a client of the firm.”

  “Was a client,” Mr. Phillips responded with a slight grimace. “I’m going to send her a letter ending our professional relationship. It’s not something I want to do, but I don’t see a way around it. Given your recent personal contact with her, I didn’t want you to be surprised when it shows up in your queue.”

  “Why?”

  Mr. Phillips cleared his throat. “She’s going to be an adverse witness in the Dominick estate litigation.”

  “What does she know about it?”

  “It seems she and Sonny were romantically involved many years ago, and when his health declined, she started visiting him and recommended the home health nurse who stayed with Sonny when he couldn’t care for himself. My information is the two of them convinced him to execute a new will shortly before his death. The lawyer who prepared the will came to the house where it was executed.”

  “Who gets Mr. Dominick’s estate under that will?”

  “Most of it goes to his children and grandchildren. Natasha still receives a life estate in the condo in Florida where she lives, but not much cash. Upon her death, the condo reverts to the estate. There is also a sizable bequest to a nonprofit organization that Mildred supports. I think she’s on the board of directors. The home health nurse, a woman named Beverly Jackson, also gets a tidy sum. The will was prepared by a sole practitioner about fifty miles east of here. I have no doubt Sonny wasn’t competent by then. The last time we met, he had trouble remembering my name. And we’d known each other for almost thirty years.”

  Amy was stunned. By everything. She especially had trouble imagining Ms. Burris involved in a romantic relationship with Sanford Dominick.

  “I don’t want to risk anything that would create an ethical issue or a conflict-of-interest problem for the firm,” Mr. Phillips continued. “When church people get together to talk and pray, it can be an information download.”

  “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Mr. Phillips stared at Amy. Her anxiety shot up as she anticipated his next statement.

  “Just make sure your name doesn’t come up in this case except to bolster Sonny’s competency to sign the will I prepared and you typed. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took every second of the drive home for Amy to unwind. And she had no one in her life she could talk to about what had just happened. Not Natalie. Not Jeff. And of course not Ms. Burris, who was the one person who could provide her with a helpful perspective.

  At home Megan and Ian were sitting at the kitchen table doing homework. It reminded her of the days when they shared crayons.

  “Why are you working in here?” she asked.

  “So I don’t have to go into Megan’s room to ask her a question about social studies,” Ian replied.

  Megan was reading a book and had a yellow highlighter in one hand. It made her look like a college coed. For Amy, the jump from crayons to college prep was far too quick.

  “How was school?” Amy asked her.

  “Okay,” Megan replied curtly.

  Ian closed his book. “I’m done. I’ll shoot baskets in the driveway while you talk about secret stuff.”

  “Did you finish the section about urban planning?” Megan asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Megan grabbed Ian’s book and asked him a few questions that he answered while tapping his feet against the floor. Amy watched in amazement.

  “That’s enough,” Ian said. “You�
�re harder than Ms. Burkholder.”

  “We’ll have a review after supper,” Megan said.

  Ian put on his jacket and ran out of the kitchen.

  “He’s studying urban planning in the fourth grade?” Amy asked. “The last time I checked he was learning about the Lost Colony.”

  “It’s part of the unit on economic development and growth over the past hundred years. They skip around in the text. It’s not chronological.”

  “Thanks for helping him.”

  “I told you I’d do it.”

  Megan sounded grown up. Amy hoped her maturity would continue into their next conversation.

  “Did you talk with Ms. Robbins?” she asked.

  “Yeah. She’s going to set up a meeting for Nate and me. Mr. Ryan and Coach Nichols are going to be there, too. It may not do any good, but I want to show Nate I can sit in the same room with him and look him in the face without crying or having a nervous breakdown.”

  Megan’s expression as she sat at the table seemed resolute enough.

  “I think Dad can come,” Megan said slowly. “But I don’t want him to say anything unless he clears it with Ms. Robbins first. Both of Nate’s parents are going to be there.”

  Amy bit her lower lip at being excluded.

  “Your father doesn’t know what the text message said. And I don’t think he should find out in a roomful of people.”

  “Ms. Robbins told me that won’t be the point of the meeting. It has to do with Nate making a serious apology. She’s not going to let him get off with an ‘If I hurt your feelings, I’m sorry’ kind of thing.”

  Amy was impressed with the counselor. Learning how to deliver a bona fide apology was something few adults knew how to do. And Ms. Robbins wasn’t just teaching Nate. At some point in her life, Megan would also need to know what to do when she wronged someone.

  “Okay,” Amy said. “I’m going to cook spaghetti with meat sauce for supper. Does that sound good to you?”

  “I had it for lunch at school, but it was so bad it made me want to barf. Yours will get the bad memory out of my brain. Will you put mushrooms in it?”

  “I bought some fresh ones the other day.”

  “Yummy.”

  Megan left the kitchen. Amy took the ground beef out of the refrigerator and put a large pot of water on the stove to boil the pasta. At times, Megan was like a plate of wet spaghetti noodles—impossible to unravel.

  After supper, Amy, Jeff, and Megan discussed the upcoming meeting with Nate at the school. Megan immediately tried to set limits on what Jeff could do.

  “You will not tell me what I can and can’t do as your father,” Jeff said in a tone of voice that left no room for debate. “I’m glad you believe I should be at the meeting, but I was going to come anyway.”

  “Okay,” Megan replied in a mousy voice. “I’m going up to my room.”

  After Megan left, Amy turned to Jeff.

  “Way to go,” she said.

  “It all goes back to our responsibility to let Megan know we care about her. She felt secure when we set boundaries for her as a little girl, and she needs to know that there are limits to her wishes, even in a situation like this.”

  Amy leaned over and kissed Jeff on the cheek. “How did you get to be so smart?”

  “You’re smart; I’m practical.”

  Later, while sitting together in the family room, Amy told Jeff about Deeds of Darkness and her conversation with Bernie Masters. Jeff’s eyes widened as Amy gave him the “elevator pitch.”

  “I’d read that book,” he replied. “Are you going to have any action in it?”

  Amy knew what Jeff meant. She’d never written a fight scene, and the idea made her chuckle.

  “What’s funny?” Jeff asked.

  Amy punched her fist into the air. “I guess I could describe someone throwing a punch, but if you want a bunch of scientific details about what happens to the bone structure of the nasal cavities when a person’s face is crushed, this won’t be the book for you.”

  “No, but if the bad guys are as evil as you say they are, they will try to dish it out and deserve to reap what they sow.”

  “That’s biblical.” Amy nodded.

  “I’ve been reading my Bible some during breaks at work.” Jeff smiled.

  Upstairs in the writing room, Amy expanded the elevator pitch into a synopsis. She thought about Bernie’s warning against killing both Roxanne and her husband and knew the agent was right. The mother and father couldn’t both die. She toyed with the idea of killing Roxanne and keeping the father alive, but his tangential connection with the main thrust of the story made that an unappealing option. However, she couldn’t get away from the possibility that one of the children might not make it through the final chapter alive. Amy had never allowed a child to play a main role in either of her other novels, much less be a tragic figure. In her books children were rarely seen or almost never heard.

  Amy stopped typing.

  What if one of the children in her new novel wasn’t a toddler but rather a teenage niece whom Roxanne took in and adopted after the young girl was abandoned by her parents? The adoption would bolster reader sympathy for Roxanne and her husband and would be a poignant subplot. The niece would be an interesting mix of tough-knocks maturity forged by difficult life circumstances and a loving, sacrificial attitude toward her baby cousin. Thinking about the niece and her possible willingness to put her own life in serious jeopardy for her cousin, Amy felt a rush of emotion. It could be a powerful plot twist. She quickly wrote down a few notes to capture her thoughts and feelings.

  That night, after Jeff fell asleep, Amy lay in bed and thought some more about the world of her new novel. A mixture of excitement and apprehension bubbled to the surface. If she’d heard the verse from Ephesians about exposing the deeds of darkness prior to writing A Great and Precious Promise, she never would have turned on the computer and typed “Chapter One.” The first and second novels sprang from gentler seeds. Now she was ready for a deeper, more serious challenge.

  After all, it was all make-believe.

  sixteen

  The night before Megan’s meeting with Nate Drexel, Amy spent an hour praying in the writing room. Her heart was still unsettled when she lay down and fell asleep.

  And went to the living room.

  Peace recognizes no foes in the courts of the Lord. The truth that God prepares a table for his children in the presence of their enemies finds its ultimate fulfillment in the place where he reigns supreme. When awake, Amy was an unwilling mystic, but during her nighttime visions, she knew that to doubt would be foolish.

  As the dream came to an end, a new series of pictures and images flooded her mind in rapid succession. Each one was indelibly printed on her memory, but only for a split second. Once the impressions stopped, she couldn’t specifically recall any of them.

  After she woke up, Amy lay on her back wishing she could hold on to the wisps of the nighttime encounter that slipped through the fingers of her mind as soon as she left the living room. But there remained a gulf between the two realms.

  “I’ll be at the school at three thirty,” Jeff said to Megan as they ate a bowl of oatmeal the following morning.

  “Okay,” Megan replied. “I wish I could stay out of school until then. It’s going to be hard to think about anything else.”

  Amy was eating a grapefruit she’d sectioned with a sharp knife.

  “Look to Ms. Robbins for guidance,” Amy said. “That’s her job.”

  “Or Mr. Ryan,” Megan replied. “I stayed after class yesterday, and he told me about a similar situation that happened when he was in high school. Later, the boy did something worse and ended up in jail.”

  Amy wasn’t exactly sure how that related to Megan. She turned to Jeff.

  “Call me at work as soon as the meeting is over. Do you want me to pick up Ian?”

  “No, I’ll be off the clock, and there’s no use going back for an hour or so. I’ll get him.”
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br />   Megan went upstairs. Jeff finished his oatmeal, too, but continued to stare at the empty bowl.

  “What are you thinking?” Amy asked.

  Jeff looked up at her. “That I don’t want to lose my temper. I’ve tried to imagine everything that could be said so I won’t be caught off guard, but that’s no guarantee it won’t happen.”

  Amy went to the door to make sure Megan couldn’t hear them.

  “Then you need to know exactly what Nate sent in his text,” she said. “Megan didn’t want me to tell you, but it’s not something you should find out for the first time in a roomful of people.”

  Amy repeated the message to Jeff. She saw red streaks come up the sides of his neck. He picked up his spoon and began tapping it against the bowl.

  “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me before now?” he asked in a tense tone of voice.

  “Maybe I should have. I didn’t want to upset you more than you already were, but when you mentioned your concern about surprises, I knew I couldn’t keep quiet.”

  “If I’d done something like that, my father—”

  “I know,” Amy interrupted.

  Jeff glanced up at her. “It’s going to take a lot to convince me this boy is sorry enough for what he’s done.”

  “Do you think you should go to the school early so you can talk to Ms. Robbins? I’ve been so impressed with her during our phone calls.”

  “No. Just pray that I say and do the right thing.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  “No, I’m committed to it.”

  Amy bit her lower lip. “Then don’t dwell on the text all day. It’s not something I want rolling around in your mind. And no matter what’s said in the meeting, promise me you won’t lose your temper and do anything rash.”

  “Like you said, there will be a roomful of people,” Jeff said. “That will help keep me in check.”

  Ian came into the kitchen.

  “I’m going to pick you up from after-school care,” Jeff said.

  “Cool. Can we go by the new indoor batting range? Bobby’s dad took him. They have machines that pitch the ball at different speeds.”

  “Sure, I’ll put your bat in my truck.”