Chapter 8: The Morning Before the Courthouse
Diane arrived at seven forty-five.
She was shorter than I expected, with Walter's eyes — that particular shade of grey-green I had not seen in fifty years and recognized immediately.
She stood in Carol's doorway with a folder under one arm and looked at me the way people look at someone they have heard about for a very long time.
"You look exactly like the photographs," she said.
"So do you," I said.
"Like your father."
Something moved across her face.
She came inside.
Carol made coffee.
Tom took himself quietly to another room, which was the right thing to do.
Diane sat across from me at the kitchen table and opened the folder.
"Susan sent everything she had," Diane said.
"The full email chain, the draft filing, and a text message exchange between Richard and the chaplain from four days ago."
I looked at the text messages.
They were brief and businesslike in the way that dishonest things often are.
Richard: *We need someone who was present.
You were there.
All you have to say is that she was pushy and he seemed confused.*
Chaplain: *I don't feel right about this.*
Richard: *You don't have to feel right about it.
You just have to say it.*
A gap of several hours.
Then:
Chaplain: *Fine.
But I want this kept quiet.*
Carol read over my shoulder.
"He's going to commit perjury for Richard."
"He hasn't done it yet," Diane said.
"But the filing goes in this morning if we don't stop it."
Mr.
Calloway arrived at eight fifteen with a woman he introduced as Patricia Holt, a civil litigator with the kind of handshake that suggested she had won arguments before breakfast on many previous occasions.
Patricia read the email chain standing up.
She didn't sit down until she'd finished.
"The clause argument is weak," she said.
"I've seen this attempted twice before.
Both times it failed at the first hearing.
But the witness is a problem.
A chaplain carries weight with certain judges.
We need to neutralize him before he signs anything."
"How?" Carol asked.
"We show him what he's actually agreeing to." Patricia looked at me.
"Margaret, I need you to tell me everything about the morning of the wedding.
Every person in the room, every word spoken, every moment the chaplain was present."
I told her.
All of it.
Walter in the hospital bed, propped up against the pillows.
The small bunch of flowers Carol had brought that morning, placed on the windowsill.
The nurse who had witnessed the signing.
The chaplain who had stood at the foot of the bed and read from a small book and then said, unprompted, *I have never seen a man so at peace.*
Patricia wrote that last part down and underlined it.
"Did anyone else hear him say that?"
"The nurse," I said.
"And Diane's mother — Walter had asked her to come.
They had remained close, for Diane's sake."
Diane nodded.
"She was there.
She remembers it.
I already called her this morning."
Patricia looked at Diane.
Then at me.
Then she closed her notebook.
"Here is what is going to happen," she said.
"I'm going to contact the chaplain's diocese before nine o'clock.
I'm going to inform them that their chaplain is preparing to provide false testimony in a civil matter, and that we have documentary evidence of his prior agreement to do so, and that we have two witnesses who will testify to the exact opposite of what he intends to say." She picked up her bag.
"People who are about to do something dishonest often reconsider when they understand that the other side already knows."
She was at the door when Richard called my phone.
I answered it on speaker, without planning to.
It was instinct.
"Margaret." His voice was different from the garage — tighter, less certain.
"I want to talk before this goes any further."
"Then talk," I said.
A pause.
"My father left you everything and left us with questions.
I think you can understand why that's difficult."
"I can understand it," I said.
"That doesn't make what you're doing right."
"What I'm doing is protecting my family."
"What you're doing," I said, "is trying to take something that was never yours.
Your father made his decision.
He made it clearly, legally, and with full understanding of what he was doing.
You have an email on your phone that proves you know that."
Silence.
"Drop the filing, Richard," I said.
"Not for me.
For your father."
The line went quiet for so long I thought he had hung up.
Then: "I need to think."
"You have until nine o'clock," I said.
And I ended the call.
Patricia was still in the doorway.
She was looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"You've done this before," she said.
May you like
"I raised two children and buried a husband," I said.
"You learn to hold your ground."
