Chapter 4: The Man Robert Left Behind Too
Douglas Hale's office was on Peachtree Street, twelve floors up, with a view of the city that cost more than most people's annual salary to maintain.
I had been there once, seven years ago, when Robert was still alive and still insisting that everyone in the family use the same attorney.
I had not liked Douglas Hale then.
He had looked at me the way certain men of a certain age look at women who marry into money — with a particular kind of patience that is really just contempt in a good suit.
My own attorney, James Whitfield, called me the morning after the lockout.
"Patricia Monroe retained Douglas Hale yesterday afternoon," James said.
"He's filed a preliminary motion to contest the 2021 will amendment on grounds of diminished capacity."
I was standing in the kitchen making coffee.
"How strong is the motion?"
"On paper, not very.
Robert was examined by two independent physicians in the months before he passed.
Both cleared him.
We have the documentation." A pause.
"But Hale is good at making juries feel things.
He doesn't need to win on the law.
He needs to win on sympathy."
"Sympathy for Patricia."
"She's a seventy-one-year-old widow who just watched her belongings carried out of her home of thirty years.
Hale will make sure every person in that courtroom sees exactly that."
I set down my coffee cup.
"What do we do?"
"We prepare.
And Allison — there's something else." Another pause, longer this time.
"Hale has requested a deposition from Grant."
"Grant will testify against the will?"
"Hale seems to think so.
Grant signed the divorce settlement, but that doesn't mean he's given up on the property.
If he testifies that his father showed signs of confusion in his final months, it gives Hale something to work with."
I looked out the kitchen window at the back garden.
Robert had planted the roses along the far fence himself, the summer before he got sick.
He had been out there every weekend in his old canvas hat, and I had brought him lemonade, and we had talked about everything except what was coming.
"Robert knew exactly what he was doing," I said.
"I know that," James said.
"We just have to prove it to a judge."
Three days later, Douglas Hale called me directly.
James had told me he might.
"Mrs.
Monroe." His voice was exactly as I remembered.
Smooth and unhurried, like a man who had never once been told no.
"I think it would benefit everyone if we could resolve this quietly.
Patricia isn't looking for a fight.
She's looking for her home."
"She's looking for a property she never legally owned," I said.
"There's a difference."
"Robert Monroe built that house for his family."
"Robert Monroe chose who that house belonged to.
That was his right."
"He was a sick man, Mrs.
Monroe.
Grief does things to people's judgment.
Illness does things.
His decision to exclude his wife and son from the primary family asset—"
"He didn't exclude them.
He made a choice.
Those aren't the same thing either."
A brief silence.
"Patricia is prepared to offer you a settlement.
A fair market buyout of the property.
You would walk away with full value and she would have her home back.
Everyone moves forward."
I already knew I would say no.
But I let him finish.
"That's a generous offer," I said.
"Tell Patricia I'll think about it."
I had no intention of thinking about it.
But I needed Hale to believe I might, because James had told me something else that morning — something about a document Robert had left that I hadn't yet fully understood the significance of.
A letter.
Handwritten.
Witnessed by two people who were not Douglas Hale.
James was having it authenticated.
He had told me to say nothing to anyone until that process was complete.
May you like
I hung up the phone and stood very still in the kitchen for a long moment.
Then I went to find the lemonade glasses — the ones Robert and I had used that last summer — still in the cabinet where I had always kept them, exactly where Patricia had never thought to look.
