“So you know I mean it.”

I folded the check once and put it in my breast pocket.

“The trust distributes on the twenty-sixth of November,” she said.

“After that, all of this becomes a much simpler conversation for everyone concerned.”

I didn’t ask her what simpler meant.

Afterward, Evelyn went to the nurses’ station to work the room.

I stood by the elevators with four pages I hadn’t signed.

Caroline Whitmore came around the corner carrying a cup of ice chips she had no reason to be carrying, her cardigan sleeves pulled down over her knuckles.