“This house,” Carol said.
For a moment I couldn’t speak, and I had to look away so she wouldn’t see my eyes. He gave a house to his attorney, a man he thought was his friend, but now that so-called friend was going to work for the enemy. I picked up a catalog. “Do you have one of these things for jewelry? I need a new watch.”
Carol smiled at me; I smiled back; a friendship was formed.
Two
Phillip watched Lillian get out of the car and walk slowly toward the house. For all that she’d had a quick burst of tears when she first saw the place, he thought she was holding up well. Considering what she’d been through, she was holding up extremely well. Shaking his head in disbelief, he remembered all he’d done to prevent this moment. He and three of his associates had spent two afternoons and one morning trying to persuade her to fight James Manville’s will—a will Phillip had come to see as immoral and possibly illegal.
But he hadn’t always felt that way. When James had told Phillip what he wanted to put in the will, Phillip had raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t dared let James know what he was thinking—that, obviously, James had found out that his young wife didn’t deserve his money; that she was probably having an affair. But instead of speaking his mind, Phillip had tried to talk James out of causing what would surely be years of court battles. It never crossed his mind that James’s widow wouldn’t contest the will. Phillip told James that if he wanted to leave his brother and sister money, then he sho
uld split the fortune three ways; there was enough for everyone.
But James didn’t seem to hear Phillip. His only concern had been how to make sure that Lillian got some farmhouse in Virginia. “She’ll love it there,” James said in one of his rare self-revelatory moods. “I stole a lot from her, and this is the way I can give it back.”
To Phillip, cheating a woman out of billions of dollars didn’t seem to be repaying her; it seemed more like a punishment. But he kept his mouth shut.
It wasn’t until after James’s death, when Phillip saw the true nature of Atlanta and Ray, that he wanted Lillian to fight. He wanted to head a team of the most clever, most conniving lawyers in the United States, and he wanted to take every penny away from those two greedy worms. In the weeks since James’s death, Phillip had never seen anything like what had been done to Lillian, both by the media and by people he’d thought of as James’s friends.
But Lillian wouldn’t budge. Nothing anyone said could make her file suit. Phillip and the other lawyers told her that she could give the money to charity after she won it, but that still didn’t make her change her mind.
“Jimmie was very smart about business,” she said, “and he did this for a reason. There’s something he wants out of this, so I’m going to abide by the will.”
“Manville is dead,” one of the lawyers said, his face red with exasperation. His thoughts were written on his face: What kind of woman could turn down billions of dollars?
After the third meeting, Lillian had stood up from the table and said, “I’ve heard all your arguments, seen all your evidence that shows that I could win, and I still won’t do it. I’m going to abide by my husband’s will.” She then turned around and walked away from them.
One of the lawyers, a man who hadn’t known James and certainly didn’t know his wife, snickered and said softly, “Obviously, she’s too simple to know what money means.”
Lillian heard him. Slowly, she turned around and looked at the man in a way that was so like James Manville, Phillip drew in his breath. “What you don’t understand,” she said quietly, “is that there is more to life than money. Tell me, if you were a billionaire and you died and left your wife nothing, would she fight for it? Or would she love the memory of you more than the money?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and walked out of the room.
The other lawyers hid their faces from the man Lillian had just told off, unable to contain their laughter. He had in fact just been through his third very nasty divorce, and his ex-wife had fought him down to who got the antique doorknobs.
In the end, Phillip had given up trying to persuade Lillian to fight. The night of the last meeting, he’d fallen into bed beside Carol and said, “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Help her,” Carol said.
“What do you think this has all been about?” he’d snapped at his wife.
Carol was unfazed; she didn’t even glance up from the magazine she was looking at. “You’ve been trying to make her into what she isn’t. You’re a worse tyrant than James was.”
“Yes, and I can see that you’re terribly intimidated by me,” he said sarcastically. “So what’s in that pretty little brain of yours?” After twelve years of marriage, he could almost read her mind, and he knew when she wanted to tell him something. As always, she’d waited for him to fail; only then would she offer her help.
“You’ve got to help her do whatever it is that she wants to do,” Carol said.
“Any ideas what that is?” he asked, looking at her with skepticism. “She stays alone in the guest room and doesn’t talk to anyone. All those so-called friends that James used to fill the house with haven’t so much as called her to say they’re sorry about his death.” His voice was filled with disgust.
“I don’t know her very well, but it seems to me that when she was with James, she tried very hard to have a normal life.”
Phillip snorted. “Normal? With James Manville? Carol, did you have on blinders? They lived in vast houses all over the world; they were surrounded by servants. I took her into a department store right after James died, and I swear she’d never seen one before. Or at least not since she ran away from home and married him.”
“That’s all true, but what did Lillian do when she was in those houses? Give parties?”
Phillip put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. “No,” he said thoughtfully. “James gave the parties, and Lillian put in an appearance. I don’t think I ever saw anyone more miserable than she was at those functions. She used to sit in a corner all by herself and eat. Poor kid.”
“Did you ever see her happy?”
“No, not—” Phillip began, then stopped. “That’s not true. One day I took some papers to James to sign, but after I left his house, I saw that he’d missed one, so I went back. When I got there, I could hear voices, so I went through the house toward the back, and I saw them. They were alone, just the two of them, no guests, no servants, and—”