Every Last Room

For a moment nobody moved, as if moving would make it true.

Then Priscilla was on her feet. "That's not — read it again."

"I don't need to read it again," Ambrose said quietly. "You heard it correctly."

"There has to be an earlier will. A real one."

"This is the only will on file. Signed, witnessed, and notarized six weeks ago."

Six weeks. Connie felt the number land somewhere behind her ribs. Six weeks ago Harlan had asked her to sit with him in the garden longer than usual, had held her hand and said nothing in particular, and she had thought it was just an old man being sentimental near the end.

"There's a mistake," Connie said, finding her voice at last. "Mr. Ambrose, I never asked for — I don't want the house. I clean the house."

"You cleaned it," Rutger said, and it wasn't unkind, just stunned. "For thirty years. Why would he leave you everything?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know," Priscilla repeated, and something in her face had gone from grief to something colder. "My father spent forty years building this family's name, and he leaves it to the woman who does his laundry, and you *don't know why.*"

"Priscilla—" Rutger started.

"No. We contest this. Today. This afternoon, if you have to, Foster." She was already dialing before she reached the door, heels sharp on the marble. "Undue influence. Diminished capacity. I don't care what it takes."

Sterling laughed — a short, ugly sound. "Diminished capacity. Dad could out-negotiate a shark two weeks before he died." He looked at Connie for a long moment, something calculating moving behind his eyes that hadn't been there a minute ago. "There's another explanation. There's always another explanation."

Connie gathered the tray of unbroken glasses with hands that would not quite stop shaking, and left the study before anyone could say anything else.

She made it as far as the hallway. Sterling caught her wrist there, out of sight of the others, his grip harder than it needed to be.

"I know what you did in '99," he said, low. "I was a kid, but I remember more than you think, Connie. And I am going to find out exactly what this was really about."