“You’d’ve thought he’d make it home…just this once. He could have at least managed that.”
Sarah sat on the edge of the ancient living room couch, her torso leaned far forward, her face in her hands. She sobbed quietly as her Aunt Anne Marie sat by her side, one reassuring hand massaging her niece’s knee. It had just passed six in the afternoon, and the musty, high-ceilinged room still resonated slightly with the last chime of the antique mantel clock. The just-slightly-off-center ticking and resonant striking of the walnut Ingraham had been a part of the house’s rhythm for longer than anyone could remember.
“He’ll come. You just wait and see,” Anne Marie said reassuringly. “He’ll come.”
“No…he won’t. I just know he won’t!” Sarah replied in intense but muted tones through her fingers. “He said he’d come, but he won’t. That’s the worst of it, you know. He won’t just say ‘No, I can’t leave right now’ or ‘I simply don’t want to.’ He’ll agree to it, and then not make it, and he’ll have some horribly believable excuse for what kept him away, something completely out of his control. ”
“Sarah, it’s barely been two days since you talked with him,” Anne Marie tried to reason with her niece. “Give the man a chance. He’s all the way across country. And it’s not as though your father’s leaving us this afternoon – at least not so far as we can tell now.”
Sarah had indeed spoken with Aaron two days ago – two days almost to the minute in fact. It had been their first conversation in more than two years, and a short and simple one at that. “Aaron, you ought to come home just this once. He’s dying and they think he won’t make the weekend.” He had assured her that he would indeed come, but that it would take a day or two – three at the most. Surely the old man could hold out that long, yes? Probably, Sarah had suggested to him, but certainly not much longer. You never knew with these things; you just never knew.
It was not Aaron’s style to ring up with progress checks, ask for rides from the airport, or anything of that sort. If and when he came, he’d simply march in through the front door as though it were not the first time he had crossed the threshold in over eleven years – as though he were a regular visitor to his time-worn childhood home. And so the women just waited. They talked quietly in the living room. They peeked into the bedroom from time to time, hoping to catch one of the increasingly rare moments when the old man managed to meld consciousness with coherence. But mostly Sarah and Anne Marie, daughter and sister, sat in the living room, or at the kitchen table, and just talked.
There were no visitors; the old man hadn’t lived a gregarious life. Indeed, he had seldom left the house in recent years. The occasional short walk in the park; perhaps a rare trip to the town’s used bookstore. Mainly though, whatever he needed, Sarah or her aunt brought. Still, despite his four-score-and-change years of existence, he had, until two weeks ago, remained a remarkably sentient and ambulatory individual. The final stroke appeared, however, to have done its job with cruel efficacy. The old man had remained bedridden since returning three nights ago from the weeklong hospital stay that had followed his late night trip to the emergency room. Sarah and Anne Marie now took it in turns to look after him, in large part overlapping in their visits to the house.
“You know,” Anne Marie said, getting up from the couch in an attempt to spring Sarah from her latest bout of melancholy, “Your father was quite something growing up.”
“Really,” Sarah responded dispassionately, trying hard to act as though she hadn’t heard the imminent anecdote on countless prior occasions. “How’s that exactly?”
“He never stopped. That was always the odd thing with him. He never relaxed – never comfortable doing just…nothing. Always going someplace, doing something new. If you managed to get him to stop and take a breath for two minutes, he’d reach for a book or magazine – couldn’t just do nothing. It was the damndest thing. This past couple of weeks – I don’t know. It’s almost like he’s paying up for a lifetime of incessant activity. One of those balance things you sometimes read about – life finally cashing all those checks you spend your life writing.”
There was, in fact, one other regular visitor, the father’s attorney. No one was certain how long the two men had been friends and business associates, but the relationship went back to at least the days when the old man had still led an active business life. Best anyone could tell, the old man had taken the young lawyer under his wing straight out of law school, and though thirty years his senior, had developed a close friendship that had endured to the present day. Since the stroke the attorney had been stopping by the house nearly every day for an hour or so in the afternoon, more out of courtesy and personal regard than any actual need for his services. Though the modest suburban house belied it, the father actually possessed a very significant estate. Its disposition was, however, thought to be very straightforward, as the only surviving family would comprise the old man’s two children and his lone sister, Anne Marie. So far as anyone knew, the details of these arrangements had been sorted out and formalized long ago.
Notwithstanding, the attorney had been appearing regularly since the old man was first taken to the hospital. He always arrived impeccably attired, as though the visit was of the gravest professional import rather than a simple personal courtesy. He had also the curious trait of appearing each time wearing precisely the same ensemble – dark blue, subtly pin striped, double-breasted suit, brilliantly white starched shirt, and modestly patterned dark red necktie, perhaps one season too wide. The routine upon his arrival was also very similar each time. A brief update would ensue with whomever happened to be tending the house on his arrival, followed by a half hour or so of sitting time alone in the bedroom with the old man. What substance comprised the latter was known to no one but the two men, as the door was always closed and the proceedings never discussed beyond the room. Some of the time the old man would be awake for these visits; others he would not. But whatever the case, the visit remained unchanged in duration or regularity.
And so it was in the midst of extolling the virtues of her brother’s incessant celerity there came the expected and familiar knock on the front door.
“That’ll be Vernon,” Anne Marie observed laconically, as she turned from Sarah and crossed the living room to the front door. “Have I mentioned what a punctual fellow you are?” she asked, opening the door and welcoming the attorney with a spirited tone that took him rather by surprise. “Do you know that you always come at precisely six o’clock, and that in the past two weeks you haven’t missed that mark by more than five minutes, not even once? Are all lawyers so fastidious, Vernon?”
“Only the virtuous ones, Anne Marie – only the virtuous ones,” he replied with a grin, endeavoring to reciprocate the proffered pleasant tone, although it was not generally in his nature.
“Ah, the virtuous attorney,” she replied, seeming to relish the lightness that characterized so few of her recent interactions with Sarah. “There’s a concept with which many have struggled through the ages, eh?”
“Now now, madam, I’m a sensitive fellow and easily scarred,” he replied, adopting a tone of mock gentility. “Besides, even if my thick skin protected me against your barbs, I cannot sit idly by while you assail my entire profession.”
“Vernon, Vernon,” Sarah offered unexpectedly from the sofa, “she’s only teasing. I should have thought a man with your rhetorical skills could easily see through such manipulation.”
Vernon only smiled, removing his heavy wool overcoat and hanging it on the brass rack in the foyer. He offered a perfunctory hug to Anne Marie and walked over to the couch, where Sarah had arisen to offer her cheek.
“How is he? Any changes at all?” he asked quietly, dropping his not inconsiderable weight into the armchair that sat opposite the sofa. As he did so, a pale trace of dust rose and danced eddies in the late day ray of sunshine that struggled through the room’s drape-covered bay window.
“Actually, he’s been awake much of the afternoon,” Anne Marie offered. “The doctor was by this morning as well. Nothing new to report though, I’m afraid. Says if he makes the weekend it’ll be an honest-to-God miracle.” As if to obviate in some way Anne Marie’s ingenuous assessment, Sarah turned and walked slowly into the kitchen. “Vernon, would you like anything?” she called over her shoulder.
“Tea’d be nice,” he replied. “It’s starting to feel downright wintry out there.”
Anne Marie turned back toward the front door, pulling her long coat from the foyer rack. “I’ve got a couple of errands to run before the stores all close,” she addressed Vernon, who peered up listlessly from the armchair. She took a step toward him and reduced her tone to a near whisper. “Will you stay with her an hour or so until I get back? She’s not had the best of days, you know.”
“Not a problem,” he replied, struggling a moment to rise from the chair. Once again on his feet, he laid a brief hand on Anne Marie’s shoulder, then turned to join Sarah in the kitchen. “Drive safely,” he called back. “It looks like rain out there. Could get a bit icy by the feel of it.” A wan smile, the door’s firm click, and she was gone.
“Do you suppose she leaves us on purpose?” Sarah asked as Vernon entered the kitchen. “I mean it could be that she feels uneasy leaving me alone. Maybe she thinks I’ll hang myself or something if she goes away. But then, she might also have this strange notion that we want to be alone together. Do you think that could be it?” A distinct and instantaneous change had come over Sarah’s demeanor since walking out of the living room – almost as though she had turned off the switch that energized her apparently morose displays of gloom at her father’s current state. “Well, whatever the reason, it’s damned handy that she does it, and let’s pray for more of the same.” She appeared almost ebullient as she walked to the stove and lifted the teapot lid, spooning in leaves for Vernon’s tea.
“Go easy on her. She’s only looking out for you, you know,” Vernon replied, drawing one of the kitchen chairs across the weathered linoleum floor. “She means well, and she has a big heart.”
“Oh please,” Sarah said, exhaling cynically. “She wants this to be over just as much as the rest of us do. She’s protecting her investment is all she’s doing.”
“C’mon, Sarah, give the woman a little credit. She’s been here at least ten hours a day since your father came back from the hospital.”
“Yeah, and how often was she here before that?” Sarah rejoined. “She’s here for one reason – the same reason, by the way, that you and I are here. Let’s not kid ourselves about what’s going on.”
“All right, all right,” Vernon acquiesced, “I suppose you’re right, at least to some degree. Have you heard any word from Aaron?”
“Ah, Aaron…dear sweet Aaron,” Sarah’s tone became noticeably more caustic. “No, there’s been no news from the coast. But then, big brother’s never been much in the communication department, now has he. As of two hours ago he was still safely ensconced in L.A. I’ll spare you all the gory details – lawyers are big on plausible deniability, right? Suffice it to say that I’m paying your associate through the nose to keep tabs on dear brother. Still, if all goes according to plan, it should turn out to be a good investment, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Vernon reluctantly agreed, accepting the cup of tea she had thrust in his direction. “Still, one never knows how these things will go. There are a lot of variables at work here. Who can say how long your father will hold on? Who can say how resourceful your brother will be in a pinch?”
“I don’t think it’s a question of resourcefulness so much as one of information and motivation,” Sarah said, pouring herself a cup of tea, and joining the attorney at the kitchen table. “The first thing working in our favor, and probably the most important, is that he’s not naturally inclined to want to come home anyway. And the second thing on our side is that he has no clue what’s really happening with the will.”
What was going on with the will was, on the other hand, well known to the attorney, for it was he who had crafted it on behalf of Sarah and Aaron’s father. It had been put together approximately five years before, when the old man was very much in control of his faculties, and about six years into the current period of estrangement between father and son. Whatever words or deeds had caused the rift were now long forgotten, but it had been just over eleven years since father and son had laid eyes on one another. In the early going Sarah had made sincere overtures to reconcile the two, but had given up after several months of futile effort, and a firm directive from each of the men to let it go. Since then, Sarah, her father, and Anne Marie had lived in the suburbs of Boston, while Aaron had remained in any of several California cities, most recently Los Angeles.
“Oh, I loved that ‘easily scarred’ bit earlier,” Sarah said, peering at him over the edge of her teacup. “You’re a regular Olivier.”
“Yes, well, each of us is putting on a bit of a show here, eh?”
“Indeed we are, Sarah agreed, sipping her tea. “And the royalties ought to be well worth the effort.”
Five years earlier Vernon and the old man had sat down to address the subject of a last will and testament. Initially the effort had seemed singularly unchallenging. The old man had amassed an estate worth several million dollars, a fact that was, accounting details aside, well known among all of the concerned parties in the family. What was not well known, to anyone other than father and attorney, was the depth of the old man’s feelings for his son, despite the decade-long separation. And so the father had contrived a final test – simple, but of immense pecuniary consequences.
The bulk of the estate, appropriate percentages being set aside for Anne Marie and the attorney, was to be split evenly between son and daughter, subject to a single proviso. Aaron, upon having been duly notified of his father’s imminent demise, had only to appear in person at the house before the old man’s final breath was drawn. Failure to meet this condition meant that the son would forego his portion of the estate. Of course the boy was not to be made aware of this condition – only that the old man was gravely ill, and wished to see his itinerant son before going to his final reward.
There had, however, developed a complication unforeseen by the father. Vernon, besides having been a personal and professional associate of the old man for more than three decades, had, through sheer force of incessant contact, become an associate of Sarah’s as well – a much more personal associate in fact. Their clandestine relationship had been an on and off sort of arrangement spanning nearly the entire decade of Aaron’s absence, and the son had no knowledge of it. Neither of course did the old man, at least so far as Sarah was aware.
And so it had transpired the previous Saturday night, five days after the old man had been taken to the emergency room; Vernon decided to share with Sarah her father’s final secret. It hadn’t seemed like a conspiratorial sort of disclosure at the time. Vernon knew Aaron as well as anyone in the family – knew him to be a decent enough fellow, who had simply not quite learned how and when to give up on a grudge. He knew also from their recent conversations that Aaron was indeed inclined to make amends at some point in the near future. The Byzantine terms of the will, thus, seemed to the attorney to be almost completely academic. Aaron would come home when summoned, plain and simple.
It was Sarah who had grasped so readily at the opportunity the will’s terms seemed to offer. “Just suppose,” she had thought aloud as they lay together in her apartment. “Suppose he were to be somehow encouraged to stay away. Then there’d be a great deal more money to go around now wouldn’t there – money you and I might share.”
“Think of it as doing him a favor,” she’d reasoned. Vernon could almost hear her mind’s cogs, now fully engaged, slowly spinning into motion. “We would be helping him to not do something he’d really rather not do anyway. And the money’s no real concern of his, since there’s every likelihood that he already assumes he’ll get nothing.”
“Now you’re rationalizing, my dear,” Vernon had chided her. “Can’t you just stick with simple avarice? It’s so much cleaner and more straightforward in these situations.”
“Suit yourself,” she had replied. “It’s not often that opportunity knocks in this life. No one can fault me for wanting to open the door the one time that it happens.”
“Your father has asked that you make the call,” Vernon informed her. “As soon as you can track him down.”
There was, however, no tracking down required. Aaron had a perfectly serviceable telephone and answering machine in his Los Angeles apartment, and Sarah, as Vernon well knew, had the information at her fingertips. Still, he was not the slightest bit surprised to later learn that she had not managed to make the call for a full twenty-four hours after their bedroom conversation.
Aaron’s line had been busy. She had had important things to do. She had lost track of time.
Yet despite all the excuses, she had indeed managed to engage in a brief conversation with her brother on Monday evening, now nearly forty-eight hours past. Of course he would come, he assured her on hearing of his father’s situation – just as soon as he had tied up a couple of things. Expect him without fail before the weekend. And the problem was that he sounded genuinely sincere – exuded more sincerity, concern even, than Sarah could remember having heard from him in years.
Which raised a singular problem from Sarah’s perspective. How does one keep at a great distance someone who is intent on coming to you? Between first hearing of the will and finally managing to make the call to Aaron, her mind had reeled with the cornucopia of possible tactics she might employ. They spanned the full range of expediency, efficacy, morality, and legality. Beginning at what seemed the most innocent end of the spectrum, it had immediately occurred to her to hire someone in L.A. to track all of Aaron’s movements and report them to her regularly. This she accomplished forthwith, obtaining from Vernon the name of a man happy to take on the assignment for only two thousand a day plus expenses. The agent was under explicit instructions never to call Sarah at the house, but to remain accessible by cell phone at any hour of the day or night should she require an update. It was also agreed that for an additional fee, to be arranged, the man might, in the near future, be asked to perform certain additional services considerably more active in nature than simply monitoring Aaron’s activities and whereabouts. The agent had agreed without any probing or other signs of compunction.
Since striking the arrangement, Sarah had quickly gotten into the habit of checking up on Aaron every couple of hours. The agent repeatedly assured her that her brother was, for the moment, still safely within the city, and that he appeared to be deviating not a whit from his normal daily routine of going to work each morning, socializing each evening, and retiring late to his apartment. The man was also sufficiently thorough to assure Sarah that as part of her generous daily billing rate, he had arranged to have Aaron’s phone and computer lines tapped, all the better to ensure complete information on her brother’s activities.
It had seemed for a while as though the son would fail to make it to Boston in time entirely through his own negligence. Then on Tuesday morning, Sarah had rung up the agent and received the worst news to date. Aaron had finally, very late on Monday night, contacted an airline and purchased a ticket from Los Angeles to Boston, one that included a two-hour layover in St. Louis.
“What are his flight times?” Sarah asked, incompletely concealing her anxiety.
“Flight leaves LAX at seven forty five on Friday morning, and gets into Logan just after five in the afternoon. Figure five hours of actual flying time, two hours of layover, plus he loses three hours because of the time zones. First-class ticket, in case you’re interested.”
After sharing this discomfiting but not unexpected information, the two chatted briefly about Aaron’s activities of the previous evening and that morning. He was apparently a very early riser who regularly jogged five miles before heading off to work. He had no discernible pets. He walked to work each day, which made keeping tabs on his whereabouts an easy affair. Indeed, he appeared to walk everywhere, including to his office in a high rise building seven blocks from his apartment, the walk to which required exactly twenty three minutes each morning, including the regular stop en route for a newspaper and coffee. The trip home after work, however, was never a direct one, punctuated instead by regular visits, with what the agent assumed were coworkers, to one or more bars in the vicinity of the office building. Aaron seldom made it back to his apartment before ten at night. The agent assured Sarah that her brother’s routine had remained unchanged since their initial conversation, deviating in no apparent way in response to the news of his father’s condition.
“He doesn’t seem in any great hurry about things, if that’s what you were expecting,” the agent opined.
“Actually,” Sarah said, “haste was the very last thing I expected.” She then decided, after only a moment of additional reflection, that the time had come to escalate the agent’s level of activity from its current passive state.
“Are you ready to start earning a bit of extra money?” she asked, receiving the entirely predictable response.
* * *
“More tea?” Sarah asked, getting up from the kitchen table to refresh her own cup.
“No…no thank you,” Vernon replied. “I’d better go in and see how your father is getting on. Do you suppose he’s still awake?”
“Only one way to find out,” Sarah observed wryly. “He was awake about an hour or so before you arrived, but I haven’t heard a peep since then.” She replaced the lid on the teapot, picked up her steaming cup and headed out of the kitchen, toward the old man’s bedroom. “Let’s have a look.”
Sarah pushed open the door slowly and stepped into the dimly lit bedroom, the attorney close behind. Her father was lying on his back in the center of an enormous four-poster bed. His head was propped up on a large stack of pillows, and his pale desiccated hands were clasped in the center of his chest, making him look for all the world as though he’d already passed on. He promptly disabused them of this notion however, by slowly turning his wan face in their direction in response to the opening door. His eyes were open, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether or not he recognized the faces hovering there before him. His lips parted very slightly as if struggling to offer a greeting, but no cogent sound emerged – only the very faintest of hissing exhalations.
“Looks as though you’re in luck,” Sarah said, reaching down and clutching the old man’s hand impassively. “A nice salutary visit ought to work wonders. I’ll leave you two to catch up on things. Just shout if you need anything.” Bending low, she administered a perfunctory kiss to the old man’s forehead, then turned and left the bedroom, drawing the door close behind her. With the attorney now occupied and Anne Marie still out, Sarah took the opportunity to catch up with her West Coast agent. She climbed the stairs, locked herself in the study and picked up the telephone.
“So everything’s in order then?” she confirmed. “Nothing’s changed?”
“Well, he really means to come; I can assure you of that,” the agent updated her. “He’s arranged to have his mail service and newspaper delivery turned off for the next two weeks. He even went out last night and bought a new suitcase – great huge thing. Looks as though brother’s planning on visiting for quite a while. Not to worry though; the fun doesn’t begin in earnest until early Friday morning. Trust me when I say he won’t have much success making his scheduled flight. That part’s easy – the tricky bit is keeping him here through the weekend, assuming that’s still what you have in mind,” he said questioningly.
“And do I want to know precisely how it is you’ll be ensuring he doesn’t make the flight?”
“Best you don’t, I suppose,” the agent offered mysteriously. “Suffice it to say he’ll come to no harm of any sort. He is, however, going to have one mightily annoying day – that I can guarantee. I’m sure he’ll fill you in on all the gory details – that is, once he finally manages to make it to Boston.”
“Fair enough,” Sarah said with satisfaction. “Just remember that your little bonus is contingent on his not leaving L.A. until I give you the all-clear.” She hung up the phone and stepped from the study just in time to hear the front door downstairs being unlocked.
“Anne!” she said effusively, walking down the stairs. “Here, let me help you with those.” she stepped briskly toward her aunt and took a pair of bulging grocery bags from her arms, dashing off to the kitchen with them.
“Well, you’re looking almost chipper,” Anne Marie observed, hanging up her coat and following Sarah into the kitchen. “What’s come over you, dear?”
“Oh, nothing in particular,” she replied. “Father’s awake again though. Least he was when Vernon went in a few minutes ago. They’re still at it, the two of them. God only knows what they go on about.” She lifted items from one of the grocery bags and began depositing them in the refrigerator as she talked. Anne Marie sat down at the kitchen table, fidgeting absent-mindedly with a button on her blouse.
“Did anyone from Brackett’s call by chance?”
“No,” Sarah answered. “Haven’t heard a thing from them since yesterday morning. I’m sure they’ve got everything under control though. Simple phone call’s all they’re going to need. Actually, come to think of it, I suppose the doctor will call, won’t he? I don’t think we’ll have to.”
Avery Brackett ran the town’s only funeral home, and ever since the stroke he had been diligently standing by, anticipating the inevitable. The choice had been a simple one – Avery was a good friend of the family, and there were no viable alternatives within reasonable distance of the house.
“Do you really think we’ll see Aaron this week?” Sarah asked, closing the refrigerator door and joining Anne Marie at the table. “Father would so love to see him one last time.”
“Well, all we can do is take your brother at his word, I suppose,” Anne Marie replied. “I have a good feeling about it though. My intuition says that he’s really sincere about getting here… I’m usually right about these things, you know.”
“God, I hope so. I’m not sure which would be worse – having him come too late or not having him make it at all. Either way, I’m sure he’d regret it forever.”
Twenty minutes later the two women were still deep in conversation when Vernon reappeared in the kitchen doorway to announce his departure for the evening.
“He’s nodded off again,” the attorney reported. “Looks as though he’s out for the night. I think I’ll head on home for now… Still no word from Aaron, I expect?” he asked, knowing full well the answer.
“Nothing at all,” Sarah responded, rising from the table. “He did say ‘before the weekend’ though. So it can’t be long now, can it?” she said in what she hoped was a convincingly plaintive yet hopeful voice.
“Well, I expect I’ll pop by tomorrow, probably in the afternoon. Perhaps we’ll have heard something by then…He’s quite weak,” Vernon added, nodding in the direction of the bedroom. Will the doctor be coming again tomorrow?”
“I expect him around nine,” Sarah said. “I’ll give you a call right away if anything should change…or if Aaron should turn up suddenly.”
“Well then ladies, I will bid you good evening. Don’t stay up too late now.” Sarah got up to see him to the door, returning a moment later to resume the conversation with her aunt.
“He’s been very helpful through all of this,” Anne Marie observed, resting her chin on her hands and suddenly looking very tired.
“More so than you can possibly imagine,” Sarah agreed. “Can I get you anything else?”
* * *
Thursday came and went with little of note occurring at either end of the country. The doctor came, as planned, promptly at nine. The old man continued to deteriorate. There was now a decent chance he would not awaken again before the end. Vernon appeared just before six in the afternoon, engaging the women in idle chatter before spending his half-hour in the bedroom. Aaron did some last minute shopping and tied up loose ends at the office. He turned in uncharacteristically early, since he had to get up extremely early to catch his flight the next day. Sarah talked only once with her agent – everything was on track and she would call him back around lunchtime on Friday for an update.
It was just under an hour’s drive from the apartment to LAX, which meant Aaron needed to be in a cab and on his way no later than five on Friday morning. He had spent much of Thursday packing, and had called the cab company to arrange for his early pickup in front of the apartment. To eliminate any chance of error, he set two alarm clocks before turning in on Thursday night.
Sarah’s agent, by contrast, had a relatively light Thursday, which was a good thing, since he too needed to be up well before the sun on Friday morning. His first task was to place one final call to the janitor in Aaron’s apartment building, with whom he had struck an arrangement concerning an unforeseen power outage that would affect the building just before five a.m. Later that afternoon, shortly after Aaron’s call to the cab company, the agent, after waiting a suitable interval, made a call to the same number and cancelled the pick-up. He had already made all of Aaron’s necessary transportation arrangements himself. The final discussion was with a child from the apartment building who the agent had convinced to perform a few seconds worth of work in exchange for a quick fifty dollars.
Aaron’s first tactical error was in choosing two alarm clocks that both required external power. As a consequence, he was awakened on Friday morning not by his favorite radio station coming from the nightstand, but by the repetitious blowing of a taxi’s horn on the street in front of his building, and not at the originally planned four a.m., but at five fifteen, somewhat past the agreed pick-up time. With a racing heartbeat and an outpouring of invective, he leapt from his bed and threw open the apartment window, shouting down to the cab driver that he was awake and would be there with all speed. Waving his hand agreeably, the agent’s pre-arranged taxi driver acknowledged Aaron’s shout, took one more reassuring look at his gasoline gauge, and settled back to wait.
Now without hope of honoring his usual morning routine of shower and breakfast, Aaron dashed about the apartment at the very fringe of self-control, throwing on clothes, collecting up his suitcases, and wondering why in Hell the power would be out on a perfectly normal Friday morning. It was five forty, and the morning sky was beginning to lighten outside his front window by the time he had everything ready to go. He struggled to drag the copious collection of luggage into the corridor outside his apartment. Taking one last quick look inside, he drew the door closed and made the instinctive motion of inserting his key into the deadbolt. It took ten full seconds of ineffectual prodding with the point of his key before he realized that something was very wrong. An object was lodged firmly in the slot of the lock and there was no chance of Aaron’s key having the slightest effect on it in the near term. As the deadbolt was the door’s only secure locking mechanism, and it could only be locked from the outside, Aaron now faced the decision of whether to take the time to fuss with it, or continue on and trust that no one had the initiative to try his doorknob for a few hours.
The decision took only a second, and Aaron dashed off to the elevator bank, hoping for the best and making a mental note to call a locksmith once he was on his way in the cab. At the end of the corridor he anxiously pushed the ‘down’ button, failing for a moment to register the complete lack of far-away mechanical sounds that normally attended activation of the elevator. Only after an interminable and fruitless two-minute wait did he come to the obvious realization that with the power out the elevator wasn’t coming. He would be moving all of his bags down from the fourth floor to street level the old fashioned way. After another moment’s consideration, he decided against trying it all in a single load. With more cursing, he left half his bags behind at the head of the stairs, and made the exhausting trip down four flights and out to the patiently waiting taxi driver, a thin black-haired young man of indeterminate ethnicity, who was by now standing next to the already-opened trunk. Quickly explaining his situation, he left the bags with the driver and dashed back into the building, emerging exhausted and nearly berserk with anger after another few minutes. By the time the car was loaded and on its way, it was five before six and the eastern sky was past pink and purple, and well into its transition to brilliantly clear California azure. As Sarah’s agent had surmised, Aaron was so distraught at how his morning had begun that he made no effort whatever to compare the logo on the taxi with the company he had actually called the previous afternoon.
Once the driver had made it onto the highway, Aaron tried calling several locksmiths, only to find that none would be open for another two to three hours, by which time he, with a bit better luck than he’d had so far this morning, would be aboard his flight to Boston. After fifteen minutes on the main highway, the taxi slowed slightly and took an exit that was wholly at odds with Aaron’s expected route to the airport.
“Where are you going?” he asked, a bit too loudly. “I said LAX…LAX!”
“Yes sir, I know” the driver replied, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “But we cannot do it on the highway at this time of day. This way will save us a good fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“Leaning back in his seat, Aaron acquiesced. “Fine…whatever. Just get me there please…and hurry.”
“Yes sir,” the driver said reassuringly. “It will be OK. I do this nearly every morning. You will see.”
Aaron grunted discontentedly from the back seat, letting his head rest against the passenger’s side door. Within five minutes the repetitious thumping of the highway seams through the car’s suspension caused him to doze off. He awoke twenty-five minutes later, wondering, as he groggily came to, why the thumping noises had stopped.
“Where are we?” Aaron asked, sitting up. “And why aren’t we moving?” The taxi sat firmly ensconced amid a sea of other automobiles, none of them doing anything except idling.
“I don’t know what has happened, sir. We haven’t moved in ten minutes. There must be an accident or something.”
Aaron glanced with horror at his watch and saw that it was nearly ten past seven. “How far are we from the airport?” he shouted. “My flight is in twenty minutes for Christ’s sake.”
“I’m afraid that’s going to be a problem, sir,” the driver informed him. Even if all of these cars were to vanish, we are still twenty five minutes away from LAX. Besides that, I am nearly out of gas. I’ll need to fill up once we start moving again.”
“Gas?…GAS?!” Aaron repeated in the most indignant tone he could manage. “Why in the hell don’t you have enough gas?… SHIT!” he exclaimed, opening the door and stepping out to join the other dozen or more motorists also standing outside their cars. “Let’s hope the airline’s got a Plan B,” he murmured to himself disgustedly as he leaned against the taxi and flipped open his cell phone.
The closest thing to a Plan B the airline could offer was the same flight the following morning. There was a redeye that left LAX at eight that evening, but it was already completely sold out. His flight today was departing at its scheduled time, and had, in fact, already completed boarding by the time Aaron hung up the phone. He climbed back into the cab and curtly informed the driver that as soon as traffic cleared, they were going back to his apartment in the city. “Better yet,” he sardonically suggested, “perhaps I should just go now to the airport and spend tonight there. At least I’d be sure to make my flight on time.” He sat sulking, amidst the occasional blowing of car horns, wondering what the conversation was going to be like back at the apartment when he refused to pay his fare. As it turned out, the driver accepted Aaron’s refusal with unexpected understanding and graciousness. He had already been more than amply compensated for his day’s work, and was not in the least concerned with Aaron’s money.
* * *
It was nearing lunchtime in Boston when Sarah hung up the study phone with a satisfied smile. The agent was expensive, but so far she was getting her money’s worth. He could not yet tell her what changes Aaron might attempt on Saturday morning to increase his odds of making the newly scheduled flight, but he would keep his eyes open and let her know. She informed him that his services on Saturday morning might or might not be required, depending on the day’s events; she would let him know by that evening.
She walked into the kitchen in time to find Anne Marie absent-mindedly making sandwiches and soup. “Still nothing?” Sarah asked, taking a seat at the table.
“Nothing at all,” Anne Marie replied. “Doctor says he may have woken up briefly once or twice yesterday, but not to the point where he would have been coherent. It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not we’d seen it. He won’t wake up again – he’s sure of that. He’s barely breathing, and the doctor can’t imagine him making it through tonight. Thank God…” her voice quavered noticeably, and she conspicuously avoided eye contact while fiddling with the soup pot. “Thank God he’s at least in his own house with his family, and he’s peaceful. I guess we should all be so lucky to go this way, huh?”
Sarah made an indecipherable but generally agreeable noise before navigating away from the uncomfortable subject. “I just spoke with Aaron,” she said. “He was scheduled to make it in this evening, but then he missed the flight this morning.”
“How on earth…?” Anne Marie responded, finally turning to face Sarah with glazed and reddened eyes.
“Who can say with him? Something about his apartment and a taxi…traffic… I don’t know,” she said, trying to convey a mixture of confusion and annoyance with her look and tone. “The important thing is he’s trying hard to make it, and he’s managed to rebook the flight for tomorrow morning. Looks like we’ll see him for sure tomorrow evening – God willing…”
“If the doctor’s right,” Anne Marie said, turning back to her desultory arranging and rearranging of sandwich materials on the counter, “there won’t be much need for him to hurry.”
“Well, one way or the other, he’ll still need to be here – he’ll want to be here. Even if he had made it in tonight, father wouldn’t have recognized him or probably even known, for that matter. So I guess the timing’s pretty academic at this point. Still, it’ll be good to see him after so long.”
Another few minutes of conversation, and the women were interrupted by the familiar knock of Vernon at the front door. He had arranged for the afternoon off from work – to get an early start on the weekend – to begin the vigil in earnest. Following a quick lunch, the three spent the afternoon talking, taking it in turns to sit with the old man in his bedroom, occasionally holding his hand, but mostly just waiting.
The waiting ended at eight thirty five that night. The old man – his daughter, sister, and oldest friend by his side – drifted off quietly, and without apparent discomfort of any kind. Within a half-hour the doctor was there to confirm the old man’s passing. By ten the men from Brackett’s had come and taken him away.
The three sat silently in the living room for several minutes after the doctor and the men from the funeral home had left. There was no sound at all, only the ticking of the mantel clock, which no one heard.
“Someone ought to call Aaron,” Anne Marie finally said, looking up at Sarah, the obvious candidate. “He’ll want to know.”
Sarah uttered a low generic grunt of acknowledgement and rose from her chair. She took a step towards her aunt, placed a hand on Anne Marie’s shoulder for the briefest of moments, and then turned and climbed the stairs to the study. She delivered the news to her brother, and then did the same to her agent, informing him that his services were no longer required.
By Saturday evening Aaron had made it uneventfully into Boston and to the house. He spent that night and Sunday catching up on the news, consoling his family, and regaling them with the story of his Friday morning debacle. They held a lightly attended wake on Sunday evening, followed by the funeral service at Brackett’s on Monday afternoon. The entire affair came and went without complication. Only Anne Marie wept openly. It seemed that as soon as it had begun, the four again found themselves sitting in the living room.
“It’s like a time capsule,” Aaron observed, finally breaking the increasingly awkward silence. “This living room…this house…it hasn’t changed one iota since I left for California – hell, since I was in high school.”
“He was a creature of habit, I suppose,” Anne Marie replied, glancing about the room. “Most of the things in this living room came from our parents’ house actually.”
“Maybe this was part of the reason for staying away,” he went on, gesturing in a vague, all-encompassing manner. “This place…it’s crushing…stifling…” He stood and walked to the bay window, drawing the heavy drapery aside and looking out onto the street.
“Face it,” Sarah said. “You’re just more of a West Coast kind of guy…sunshine, wide open spaces…the wild frontier. You and he were always two very different people.”
“See, that’s just it,” Aaron continued, turning away from the window. “I was never sure whether it was him, or just this whole…I don’t know,” he stopped, shaking his head lightly, unable to complete the thought. Again there was no sound but the ticking mantel clock for over a minute.
“So what happens now?” Anne Marie asked, leaning forward in her seat. “I don’t suppose there’s much point in keeping the house.”
“Just another part of the estate,” Aaron responded. “It’ll all be up to the executor, I suppose…I assume that’s you,” he said, looking at Vernon.
“Yes it is,” Vernon confirmed. “We’ll sort it all out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Sarah asked, with a bit more enthusiasm than she’d intended. “Why tomorrow?”
“Your father’s instructions were very specific,” Vernon replied. “The will is to be reviewed in my office on the day after the funeral. That would be tomorrow. Any time that’s convenient for the three of you…Oh, and we need one additional person as a witness. I have an associate who’ll be happy to sit in.”
“He always had a flair for the dramatic,” said Anne Marie, mustering a brief smile. Sarah stared for one brief but intense moment at Vernon, but he avoided eye contact and rose instead to leave.
“How about nine in the morning?” he suggested, taking his coat from the foyer rack. Hearing no dissenting votes, he put his hand on the front doorknob. “All right then; I’ll meet you then in my office. Have a good evening.”
“Anyone up for some seafood?” Aaron asked, endeavoring to raise the energy level in the room a bit. “C’mon, let’s get out of this house for a couple of hours. “Seafood’s horrible in L.A. It’s one of the few reasons I look forward to coming back here.”
“Yeah,” Sarah agreed. “I think a little lobster might hit the spot after all.”
* * *
Vernon sat in an oxblood leather armchair to one side of his enormous polished walnut desk. Anne Marie, Sarah, and Aaron occupied matching chairs and sofa that surrounded a glass-topped coffee table. The elegant furniture, plush carpeting, rich heavy drapes, and well-stocked bookshelves gave the office a very formal and legal feel, one befitting a law firm partner. “Just so everyone knows what we’re dealing with here,” the attorney began sonorously, “the approximate total value of your father’s estate, including the house, is just a bit over eight million dollars – that’s before estate taxes, of course. He made an excellent living for many years, and as I think everyone’s aware, he wasn’t much of a spender.”
A man none of the family members knew sat quietly in the corner of the room – the witness Vernon had spoken of earlier. He was introduced to the family simply as ‘Mr. Allard.’
“Aside from the house, the great majority of the estate is in cash, bonds, and other securities. Per his wishes, I will serve as executor. In that capacity, let me read through the sections of the will that deal specifically with disposition of the assets, as these are presumably the principal areas of concern to the three of you. I’ll spare you all the legal bits, unless you’re really interested.” He flipped through several sheets of paper until satisfied he was at the correct section.
“Let’s see,” he said, glancing in Anne Marie’s direction, “to my loving and devoted sister I happily bequeath the sum of one million dollars, as well as the house that served as my principal residence, and all its contents. Looks as though the decision on what to do with the house will be yours, after all,” Vernon added, turning to the next page of the will. “To my lifelong attorney, professional colleague, and good friend, Vernon Albright, I bequeath the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, small compensation for a lifetime of friendship and camaraderie, as well as the unenviable duty of sorting out my final affairs.” He did not look up from this somewhat awkward revelation, but instead continued reading.
“As for my daughter, Sarah and son, Aaron, this is a rather more complicated matter, and one that has troubled me greatly these past years. Simple expediency would suggest an even division of the remaining assets. Such a mechanistic approach, however, in no way does justice to the countless thoughts, words, and deeds that have passed between the three of us over the years.” Sarah glanced briefly in Aaron’s direction, then lowered her eyes to the coffee table as Vernon continued.
“Therefore, with all due respect for the bonds of family obligation, but with a strong desire to acknowledge appropriately the feelings of my son and daughter toward me, I order the remainder of my estate to be distributed according to the following instructions.” Vernon paused for a moment, reaching up to rub nervously at his forehead.
“My son Aaron shall receive half of the remaining assets in my estate, subject to the single condition that, upon having been duly notified of my impending demise, and being given ample time to accomplish it, he appear in my presence one final time before my death. Despite our differences over the years, I bear him nothing but the fondest regard and deepest paternal love, and feel that this gesture is the very least he might offer in recognition of my contributions to his upbringing, however imperfect they may have been.” Aaron leaned back in his chair, folded his hands calmly, and took several very deep and entirely audible breaths. Sarah and Anne Marie stared stoically at Vernon as he continued reading.
“The foregoing proviso is subject to a single mitigating condition, which brings me to my loving daughter, Sarah.” Vernon rubbed again at his forehead. “She shall receive the remaining half of the estate’s assets, if, and only if, upon being duly notified of the foregoing condition concerning her brother’s inheritance, she then exerts every reasonable effort to assist in his timely arrival at my side, or, at the very least, takes no active role in said process whatsoever. Failure to abide by this condition or to impede in any way her brother’s attempts at compliance shall result in complete forfeiture of her portion of the estate, save a nominal bequeathal of one hundred thousand dollars. Further, if it be demonstrated that my son has made a good faith effort to return home, and has been impeded in any way whatsoever in that effort, he shall retain his aforementioned portion of the estate. If either of the conditions of inheritance thus described shall cause a forfeiture to occur, then the forfeited moneys shall be distributed through a charitable trust to be created and administered by my executor. Final judgement regarding the degree to which these conditions have or have not been met shall also be at the sole and irrevocable discretion of my executor.”
A palpable silence enveloped the office for perhaps fifteen seconds. Sarah and Aaron stared intently at each other, each having suddenly gained profound but as yet incomplete insight into the events of the past few days, and each now reflecting on the consequences of that insight. Sarah reacted first.
“So then it’s up to you who gets what?” she said, looking to Vernon, and beginning to sense an awkwardness in his demeanor that she didn’t at all care for. “Are you prepared to share those decisions with us now?”
“I think it’s best,” Vernon responded calmly, “if we reserve those details for individual conversations.”
“Actually, I’d just as soon sort it out right now, while everyone’s here,” she responded. “I mean, why not? We’re all together. I think it’s pretty clear from the will what our father intended.”
Since the terms were unambiguous for he and Anne Marie, Vernon looked in Aaron’s direction for any sign of dissent. Receiving instead an insouciant acknowledging nod, the attorney continued.
“Fair enough. The first indisputable observation is that Aaron did not, in fact, satisfy the stated condition of the will, i.e. that he make it home prior to his father’s passing.” He glanced briefly at the boy, who continued to stare back dispassionately. Vernon then shifted his gaze momentarily to Sarah, noticing a subtle but unmistakable smirk on her face.
“However,” he said, pausing, “Sarah failed as well to satisfy the condition set upon her. When provided with the information necessary to help expedite Aaron’s timely return to Boston, she not only failed to do so, she, in fact, took several active steps to impede his return.”
“The HELL I did!” Sarah said, staring venomously at Vernon, but not rising from her seat. “I called Aaron in plenty of time for him to get here, and that’s all I did! He’s the one who screwed around for five days getting his ass back here.”
“That’s true as far as it goes,” Vernon agreed, “but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Aaron has shared with all of us his original flight schedule for last Friday, which, had things gone according to plan, would have gotten him here with several hours to spare.”
“Yeah, well you know what they say about the road to hell, right? Just because his good intentions didn’t work out, that doesn’t mean he still didn’t fail according to the will’s criteria. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that any of it was my fault.”
Throughout the increasingly heated exchange, Sarah kept her gaze and her diatribe focused squarely on Vernon, leaving Aaron and Anne Marie to sit in silent awkwardness, looking at no one, taking it all in.
“Jesus,” she continued, “you’re making it sound as though I had something to do with him being late. That’s a load of bullshit, and you know — ”
“Actually, that’s not entirely accurate.” To everyone’s surprise – particularly Sarah, who immediately recognized the unexpected new voice – the laconic observation had come from the hitherto silent observer in the corner of Vernon’s office. Sarah, in rapt disbelief, quickly shifted her gaze from Vernon to the speaker. Aaron and Anne Marie also looked in the man’s direction, primarily because his sudden comment had compounded their already considerable confusion.
“I feel compelled to admit that I was retained last week by Sarah in order to perform certain…services, all of which were designed to ensure that Aaron here did not successfully make it out of Los Angeles on Friday.”
“Whoa…hold on…” Aaron finally interjected, suddenly leaning forward in his chair. “Are you telling me that all that crap on Friday…that was…” He stared incredulous at his sister, and then at the agent, as the situation came into stark focus in his mind. Anne Marie, still not quite getting it all, only stared at her niece, who, in turn, leered at Vernon, Aaron, and the agent in roughly equal measure.
“SON OF A BITCH!” she cursed, less at anyone in particular, more at the inescapable situation in which she now found herself. “What is this? Some kind of goddamned three-way conspiracy? What was the idea? Hook me up with your own agent so that he can fuck me over at the end? That sounds like…entrapment or something to me!”
“Actually,” Vernon said, trying his best to remain calm in the face of her verbal fusillade, “your father’s intention in crafting the will in this way was for each of his children to be provided with a final opportunity to respond to a morally challenging situation, to demonstrate your basic nature, if you like – and, of course, to be provided with whatever support you needed to do so.”
“Yeah, well he can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned, if he’s not already there” she jumped up and made abruptly for the office door. “So, for that matter, can the rest of you,” she exclaimed, neglecting to exclude Anne Marie from her all-encompassing anathema. “I’ll see your asses in court – you can count on that,” with which ominous remark she exited, slamming the door behind her.
Another awkwardly silent moment ensued before Anne Marie finally spoke up. “Vernon, what on earth does all of this mean?” she asked, the gist of the situation not yet having sunk in. “All she had to do was make a phone call. She did that…didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did,” Aaron answered, “and a whole lot more apparently…a whole lot more.”
“So…what was he after with all that business in the will? What was he trying to accomplish?” Anne Marie asked, still struggling to understand all that had been said.
“I think,” Aaron opined, “he was just hoping for one good honest expression of how each of us felt about him. God knows, I haven’t done much of that in the past eleven years. Apparently, he had more capacity for forgiveness and understanding than I ever gave him credit for.”
“And cleverness,” added Anne Marie. “He’s been gone four days already, but he’s still causing a fuss, without even being here. That’s my brother…”
“And he managed to affect my life pretty intensely from three thousand miles away, without ever getting out of his bed,” Aaron added. “That’s my father…”
He sighed loudly, paused for a moment, then turned to face Sarah’s agent. “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that business with the cab on Friday morning?”
The agent only smiled and raised a confirming eyebrow. “No hard feelings?”
“Yeah, right,” Aaron replied, shaking his head in disbelief. “By the way,” he added, smiling back at the man,” you owe me eighty bucks for a new door lock.”
Aaron and Anne Marie got up to leave, and Vernon rose as well to see them out. As his aunt stepped outside, Aaron felt the attorney’s hand on his shoulder, drawing him back inside the office. “I’ll call you in a day or two so we can discuss the final financial arrangements.”
“That’ll be fine,” Aaron responded. “I’m in town through the end of next week anyway. I think we’ll work up something fair for Sarah too. She’s not as bad as everything sounded in here – chalk it up to a moment of weakness. Besides, it’s not like I couldn’t have tried to get here a little sooner, right?”
The two men shook hands one final time and Aaron stepped toward the door. He paused though and turned back yet again in Vernon’s direction. Leaning close, he asked the attorney quietly, “I thought you and Sarah were…you know…”
“Yeah,” the attorney confessed, “but I’m guessing those days are pretty much over now.”
“I suppose so,” Aaron agreed with a slight grin. “Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”