Chapter 10 — I Leave No Assets

“To my beloved wife, Frances,” Mr.

Bradley read, “I leave no assets or property under the provisions of this last will and testament.”

The entire office went still.

So still that I could hear the faint tick of the radiator in the corner.

For one terrible, disorienting second, I assumed my old ears had simply failed me — that I had misheard, that ninety years had finally caught up with my hearing in the worst possible moment.

It is a strange mercy, the way the mind refuses a blow at first.