Chapter 5: What Larry Left Behind
Gerald Foss's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building that smelled like old carpet and serious money.
The receptionist showed me in without making me wait.
Gerald was already standing when I entered, and there was a second person in the room — a woman about my age, maybe a few years younger, seated in the chair across from his desk with a legal pad on her knee.
"Sarah, this is Diane Chu.
She's a litigation attorney.
Given what Richard Whitmore did this morning, I asked her to join us."
Diane stood and shook my hand.
Her grip was firm and brief.
"Gerald told me about the call.
Did he record it?"
"I don't know.
I didn't."
"It doesn't matter yet.
Sit down.
Let's go through everything."
I put the letter, both envelopes, and the folder on Gerald's desk.
He and Diane went through them methodically, passing pages between them without speaking.
I sat and watched their faces.
Gerald's expression didn't change much.
Diane's did — once, near the back of the letter, her eyes stopped moving for a moment before she turned the page.
"What?" I said.
She looked up.
"Did you read this part?"
She turned the letter around and pointed to a paragraph near the end — one I had reached the night before but hadn't fully absorbed.
I read it again now.
*"The brothers will tell you I was unstable.
They have a report from a psychiatrist — paid for by Richard — dated eight months before I walked away.
I want you to know that report exists so you are not surprised by it.
I also want you to know that I have a counter-report, prepared by an independent physician at my request two years ago, confirming full cognitive function.
Gerald has it.
He also has the payment records showing Richard commissioned the first report three weeks after Father's will was read.
I was not unstable, Sarah.
I was inconvenient."*
I set the letter down.
"He knew they'd use it," I said.
"He knew everything they'd use," Diane said.
"Which means he spent three years building a case that he then handed to you to carry." She didn't say it unkindly.
But she said it plainly.
"That's a significant thing to do to someone without their knowledge."
"I know."
"Are you angry?"
I thought about it honestly.
"I don't know yet.
Ask me when this is over."
Diane almost smiled.
She turned to Gerald.
"The psychiatric counter-report — how solid is it?"
"The physician is retired but credentialed and willing to testify.
The report is dated, notarized, and the methodology is clean." Gerald opened a second folder I hadn't seen before and slid it across the desk.
"Lawrence was thorough."
"What about the witnesses?" I asked.
"The names on the list."
"I sent a paralegal this morning," Gerald said.
"Two of the six are confirmed reachable.
One man — goes by Coop, real name Thomas Cooper — was at the shelter on 9th.
He knew Lawrence for six years.
He says Lawrence spoke about you regularly." Gerald paused.
"He says Lawrence called you 'David's girl.' He told Coop that David Mercer once gave him money to get a lawyer when the family first came after him, and that it was the only time in that period anyone helped him without wanting something in return."
My father.
Giving money to a man I'd never met, to fight a family I'd never heard of, fifteen years before any of this began.
"Can Coop testify?" Diane asked.
"He's willing.
He's coherent, consistent, and he has no criminal record.
He'll be a credible witness." Gerald folded his hands.
"Richard's team will try to discredit him based on his living situation.
We prepare for that."
"What's Richard's next move?" I asked.
Diane leaned back.
"He'll file for a temporary injunction to freeze the estate within the next seventy-two hours.
Standard opening move — it costs him almost nothing and it forces us to respond.
While we're responding, he'll be gathering anything he can use against you personally.
Employment history, finances, relationships, anything that suggests you had prior knowledge or motive."
"I'm a mid-level project manager at a logistics company," I said.
"I have a studio apartment and a seven-year-old car."
"That actually helps us," Diane said.
"It makes the idea that you married a man for his money look absurd on its face." She picked up the letter again.
"What helps us more is this.
The specificity of it.
The preparation.
The independent psychiatric report.
The witness list.
The second envelope with your father's initial." She set it down.
"Lawrence didn't just leave you money.
He left you a defense."
I looked at the pages spread across Gerald's desk.
Two years of black coffee and weather talk.
Three years of quiet preparation I'd known nothing about.
"He really thought of everything," I said.
The office was quiet for a moment.
Then Gerald's phone rang.
He glanced at it and his expression shifted — just slightly.
"It's Richard's attorney," he said.
Diane stood up and straightened her jacket.
May you like
"Answer it," she said.
"And put it on speaker."
