Chapter 3: What Robert Monroe Left Behind
Patricia's hand dropped from Grant's arm.
She took one step back.
Then another.
Her heel caught the edge of the driveway and she grabbed the SUV door to steady herself.
The relatives who had been laughing forty minutes ago at the steakhouse stood perfectly still on the lawn, looking between Grant and his mother and the court order in my attorney's hand.
"Grant." Patricia's voice had gone quiet.
That was worse than the shouting.
"When did you know?"
Grant looked at the deputy.
At the locksmith.
At the boxes.
Anywhere but her.
"Grant.
When did you know about this?"
"Mom—"
"Answer me."
He pressed two fingers to his forehead.
"Dad told me before he passed.
He sat me down and told me what he'd done and why."
The color left Patricia's face completely.
"Your father told you he was giving this house to her and you said nothing to me?
For three years?"
"He made me promise not to."
"He made you—" She stopped.
Her jaw tightened.
"Robert has been gone for three years and you have been letting me live in this house, in my house, knowing it belonged to her?"
"It's complicated, Mom."
"It is not complicated!" The quiet was gone.
Her voice cracked across the lawn and two of the younger relatives took a step back.
"You let me humiliate myself at that courthouse today.
You let me celebrate.
You stood there and you watched me pour champagne and you said nothing."
Grant said nothing now either.
My attorney touched my elbow gently.
I hadn't moved from the driveway.
I wasn't sure I needed to.
Patricia turned toward me.
The fury on her face was real, but underneath it was something I hadn't expected to see.
Something that looked almost like grief.
"Why?" she said.
"Why would Robert do this?
He built this family.
He built everything we have.
Why would he take this house and give it to you?"
I had asked myself that question for three years.
I knew the answer.
I had read the letter Robert left with my attorney a dozen times, in the weeks after he passed, trying to understand what he had seen that I hadn't yet fully understood about his son.
But this was not the moment for that answer.
Not on the lawn.
Not in front of the relatives and the deputy and the locksmith still working on the door.
"You should speak to Grant," I said.
"I am speaking to you."
"I know." I picked up my purse from where I had set it on the hood of my attorney's car.
"But the answer to that question is between you and your son."
I walked toward the front door.
The locksmith had finished.
My attorney handed me the new key.
Patricia's voice followed me up the porch steps.
"This isn't over, Allison.
You think you've won something today.
You haven't won anything."
I put the key in the lock.
It turned smoothly.
"You'll be hearing from my attorney," she said.
"We will contest the will.
We will contest every document your lawyer is holding.
Robert was not well when he made those changes and we will prove it."
I opened the door and stepped inside.
The house smelled the same.
Polished wood and the faint trace of the candles Patricia always kept on the mantelpiece.
Eight years of my life lived inside these walls, most of them spent feeling like a guest in someone else's home.
I set my purse on the entry table — the one Patricia had always moved to the hallway closet, saying it cluttered the foyer.
I left it exactly where I put it.
Behind me, through the closed door, I could hear Patricia's voice rising again.
I couldn't make out the words.
I didn't need to.
What I didn't know yet was that Patricia's threat about contesting the will was not empty.
She had already made a phone call from the steakhouse — before they had even finished their champagne — to a man I hadn't heard mentioned in years.
A man who had once told Robert Monroe that his decision was a mistake he would regret.
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His name was Douglas Hale.
And he was Robert Monroe's original attorney.
