Chapter 6: Robert Makes His Move
We didn't go back to the reception immediately.
Tristan stepped into the hallway to call his friend Marcus, who had passed the bar two years earlier and owed Tristan a favor from a situation involving a broken lease and a very bad landlord.
I stood in the doorway of the study.
Gerald was still at his desk.
Linda had not moved from her chair.
The two of them were alone together for the first time in however many years it had been.
I almost left them to it.
Then Linda spoke.
"How long have you hated me?" she asked.
Gerald looked up.
"I don't hate you, Linda."
"You handed that envelope to my son in front of seventy people."
"I handed it to him in a garden," Gerald said.
"Which is where it needed to be handed.
Before Robert's filing became public and before Tristan heard about any of this from someone else."
"You humiliated me."
"You canceled my granddaughter's reception on her wedding day." Gerald's voice stayed level.
"I think we can agree the evening has been difficult for more than one person."
Linda looked at the window.
Outside, the lights in the trees were still glowing.
A woman's laugh carried across the garden, bright and unaware.
"She never liked me," Linda said.
"From the beginning."
I stayed very still in the doorway.
"I don't think that's true," Gerald said.
"She never tried."
"She came to every dinner.
She learned how you take your coffee.
She didn't tell Tristan about this estate for two years because she wanted him to love her without the complication of all of this." Gerald gestured at the room around him.
"That is not the behavior of a woman who doesn't care."
Linda said nothing.
"What you wanted," Gerald said gently, "was for her to need your approval.
And she didn't.
That's a different problem."
In the hallway, Tristan's voice was low and steady.
I caught fragments.
Trust challenge.
Filing date.
Yes, I have the document in front of me.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then something made me answer.
"Is this the new Mrs.
Calloway?" The voice was smooth.
Male.
Older.
I felt the name like a cold hand on the back of my neck.
"My name is not Calloway," I said.
"No," the man said.
"I suppose it isn't.
Not yet." A pause.
"Congratulations on the wedding.
I understand it was quite an event."
"Who is this?"
"I think you know."
I walked to the far end of the hallway, away from the study, away from Tristan.
"What do you want, Robert?"
"A conversation," he said.
"Before this becomes something neither of us can walk back from.
Your grandfather is a stubborn man.
He's going to tell you to fight.
But a legal challenge takes years.
It takes money.
It takes energy." Another pause.
"I'm offering you something simpler."
"I'm listening."
"Walk away from the estate.
Voluntarily disclaim the inheritance.
In exchange, I withdraw the challenge, and you and your new husband start your life without a twelve-year court battle hanging over it."
The band outside started a new song.
Something slow.
"And if I don't?" I said.
"Then I file the supplemental evidence on Monday," Robert said.
"Which includes documentation that your grandfather approached Tristan's employer eighteen months ago to run a background check.
Without Tristan's knowledge or consent." He let that sit.
"I wonder how your husband will feel about that."
The hallway felt very narrow suddenly.
"I'll need to think about it," I said.
"Of course," Robert said.
"You have until Sunday night."
The line went de@d.
I stood there for a moment with the phone in my hand.
Then I walked back to the study doorway.
"Gerald," I said.
He looked up.
"Did you run a background check on Tristan?
Through his employer?"
The pause was a fraction too long.
"I had someone make inquiries," he said.
"Eighteen months ago.
Standard due diligence."
"Without telling him."
"Without telling him."
I looked at my grandfather — this man in his tuxedo, in his beautiful house, with his careful plans and his long patience — and for the first time I felt something complicated move through me that wasn't entirely gratitude.
May you like
"He knows," I said.
"And he's going to use it."
