Chapter 6: The Deal She Tried to Make
Margaret called me the next morning.
I was in the kitchen making Lily's breakfast.
Lily was still in her pajamas, drawing at the table, a turkey she had started the night before and not finished.
She was adding details — a hat, a scarf, small careful shoes.
I looked at the name on my phone screen and let it ring twice before I answered.
"Claire." Margaret's voice was measured.
Controlled.
She had slept on it and rebuilt herself overnight.
"I'd like to meet today.
Just the two of us.
No attorneys."
"I have Lily."
"Bring her.
She can play in the garden." A pause.
"I have her things here.
From when she used to visit.
Her toys.
The little chair Gerald bought her."
I didn't say anything.
"Claire.
I know last night was —" She stopped.
Started again.
"I know I handled things badly.
I want to make this right."
"What does making it right look like to you, Margaret?"
"Come to the house.
Let me show you."
I looked at Lily.
She had given the turkey a red scarf.
She was now deliberating over whether to add a hat.
"Two o'clock," I said.
We arrived to find the house different from the night before.
The Thanksgiving table had been cleared.
The good china was put away.
Margaret met us at the door in ordinary clothes — no jewelry, no performance.
She looked older in daylight.
She looked like what she was: a woman in her late sixties who had spent forty years managing a household and a husband and a family and had confused that management for love.
She had made tea.
She had put a small plate of biscuits on the table.
She had found, somewhere in a cupboard, a set of colored pencils and a drawing pad, which she set at the end of the table nearest Lily's chair.
Lily looked at the pencils.
Then at Margaret.
Then at me.
"Can I?" she asked.
"Yes, baby," I said.
We sat across from each other while Lily drew.
"I want to propose something," Margaret said.
She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"I will withdraw the contested transfer.
I will instruct David to do the same.
The property reverts to the estate and is administered according to Gerald's letter.
Lily receives the house in trust."
I waited.
"In exchange," she said, "I want the right to remain in the house until I pass or until I choose to leave.
I'm sixty-eight years old.
I have nowhere else to go."
"That's what Gerald's letter already allows," I said.
"Mr.
Harlow told me last night.
Gerald specified that you could stay as long as you wished.
He didn't want you removed.
He just wanted the house to go to Lily."
Margaret's hands tightened around the mug.
"He told you that."
"Mr.
Harlow told me.
Last night, after the call.
I stayed on the line after you left the room."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Then what do you want from me?" she said.
"I want you to look at her," I said.
Margaret looked at Lily.
Lily was drawing something new.
Not a turkey this time.
A house.
A large house with many windows and a garden and, in the garden, several small figures.
She was adding them one by one with careful attention.
"She loves this house," I said.
"She always has.
She used to ask me every week when we could visit Grandpa.
After Gerald passed, she asked me if the house would be lonely without him." I paused.
"She's not your enemy, Margaret.
She never was."
Margaret looked at the drawing for a long time.
"I know that," she said quietly.
"Then why?"
She didn't answer immediately.
When she did, her voice was lower than I had heard it.
"Because if she belongs here," Margaret said, "then I have to admit that I was wrong about everything.
About you.
About what this family was.
About what Gerald thought of all of it." She stopped.
"That's a very hard thing to admit when you're sixty-eight years old and your husband is gone."
Lily held up her drawing.
"Grandma," she said.
"I put you in it.
You're the one by the flowers."
Margaret looked at the small figure standing in the crayon garden.
Her eyes filled.
She didn't let the tears fall.
But they were there, and she didn't try to hide them, and that was the first true thing I had seen from her since I had known her.
"That's very kind," she said.
Her voice was not steady.
"Thank you, Lily."
Lily went back to drawing.
I picked up my tea.
The negotiation, I realized, was already over.
It had ended the moment Lily put Margaret in the garden.
But there was still something Margaret hadn't told me.
Something I had seen in David's face the night before when he said he hadn't known about Gerald's call.
I set my mug down.
"Margaret," I said.
"I need to know about the second deed."
Her face went very still.
May you like
"What second deed?" she said.
But her hands had stopped moving.
