I looked up at Winnie. She was staring at the wall like a shell-shocked somnambule. Ashley Brooks, the woman in the tweed suit who had just stolen my inheritance, was on her feet and beelining for the door.
So I pushed back my chair and went after her.
CHAPTER 29
* * *
WINNIE
“I’m so sorry,” my aunt Rita said, taking the seat just vacated by my mother’s spritely heiress. My mom had done some whack-a-doodle shit over the years, but with this, her final act, she had outdone even herself. “You must be so disappointed.”
I was many things in that moment—flabbergasted, bewildered, stupefied, dumbstruck. But disappointed? Not so much.
“My mother had her reasons for doing what she did,” I said, once I found my voice. “Whatever they were, I respect them.”
“That’s very evolved of you,” Aunt Rita said, in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe me. So I clarified.
“I never expected to get the money.”
“You didn’t?”
“I gave it a fifty-fifty chance.”
“I know things were strained between you,” she said. And I corrected her.
“She hated my guts. Charlie’s, too. But she was also wildly unpredictable. I daresay she took pride in that.”
“Unpredictable how?” Aunt Rita asked. Since we hadn’t had a service, I never got to eulogize my mom. Now seemed like as good a time as any, so I ponied up.
“She would forget my birthday,” I told her, “then two months later buy me a horse.” The look on my aunt’s face suggested she had never heard this story.
“Like, a real live horse?”
“Yes. But I never wanted a horse. I didn’t even know how to ride. So it just sat there in some stable up the 5 freeway. Eventually she sold it. We never spoke of it again.”
Aunt Rita studied me as she considered that. She seemed to be enthralled by my tale of woe, so I offered another one.
“She once flew in from Paris just to see my piano recital, only to go back the very same night.”
“The same night?”
“Yes. I think she was home for about three hours. There wasn’t time for her chauffeur to go home, so she sat him in the back row. I could see his funny hat out of the corner of my eye the entire time.”
“Sweet that she made the effort,” Aunt Rita offered. So I corrected her.
“Oh, she only flew in because she’d invited Faye Dunaway and didn’t want her to have to sit by herself.”
Aunt Rita considered that. “And how did you feel about that?”
“I had to play ‘La campanella’—I felt nervous as all hell!” I knew she wanted me to say something substantive, like I was flattered she’d invited Faye to my recital or pissed she didn’t stay longer, but “La campanella” is a beast, and I’d dreaded that recital for weeks.
The memories were flooding back now, so I blurted out another one. “Then there was the time she came back from Russia with a sixteen-year-old girl who she said was going to be my new sister.”
Aunt Rita’s eyes got big like golf balls. “She adopted a Russian girl?”
“Her name was Olga, of course. She was six feet tall with long dark hair and eyes as blue as a tropical sky. I think Charlie was in love with her.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“My dad put the kibosh on it. He thought it might traumatize Charlie and me. Unfortunately the trauma had already been inflicted by the mere arrival of the poor girl.”
“Yes, I can imagine.”
“Dad did his best to keep Mother’s impulses in check, but after he died, she went full crazytown. Obviously.”
Rustling up these memories was starting to make me feel light-headed. I looked around for a bottle of water, but Neutral Third Party hadn’t thought to put any out.
“What about Charlie?” she asked.
“What about him?”
“Do you think he’ll try to dispute this?”
I thought about what Charlie might do. “Not on his own accord,” I answered honestly. “But that wife of his can be quite the bully.” Charlie was the textbook definition of pussy whipped. I would have felt sorry for him if I wasn’t so consumed with feeling sorry for myself.
I wondered if Aunt Rita had an agenda with all her questions. Does she want us to protest the will? Was she hoping for a bigger cut? Was she projecting when she asked if I was disappointed? I would have been perfectly pleased to keep talking to her, but her next question crossed the line.