I sat very still. “What happens now?”
“That depends on whether you want a family dispute or a legal one.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
“Not if you prepare properly.” He reached into his briefcase and removed a folder with my name on the tab in neat black ink. “Your grandfather left formal instructions. In case your father moved before you did.”
“He expected this.”
“He expected your father to underestimate you.”
Inside the folder were trust documents, a notarized statement from my grandfather, and a letter authorizing Mr. Gaines to transfer control of several protected assets to me on the condition of documented evidence of attempted interference. I had more than enough evidence. I had a decade’s worth of it.
The meeting was set for the next morning in Mr. Gaines’s office on Main Street, above an old insurance agency and next to a florist that had been in that location since before I was born. My father arrived first, in a navy blazer, wearing the calm expression of a man who has always believed he is the smartest person in any room he enters. Diane came in behind him, cream-colored suit, chin slightly elevated, carrying a handbag she used the way some people use armor.
They both stopped when they saw me seated beside Mr. Gaines.
My father recovered quickly. “Emily.” The tone was careful, light, deliberately ordinary, like we had simply run into each other somewhere.
