“I didn’t manipulate anyone. She knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Knew I wasn’t you. The whole time.”
Tim’s attorney filed to contest the bequest, claiming undue influence.
He laughed, ugly and short. “Tell that to a judge. See how that sounds coming from the man I paid $500 a week.”
The door slammed behind him so hard that a picture fell off the wall.
Within a week, the legal papers arrived. Tim’s attorney filed to contest the bequest, claiming undue influence. Then the phone calls started from relatives I had never met, calling me a fraud, a con man, and a vulture.
I sat on my mother’s couch that night, papers spread across the coffee table, and almost called the whole thing off.
“What are you going to do, baby?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Ma. He has money. I have nothing.”
“You have the truth.”
“She called you the boy who chose to stay.”
***
I drove to the nursing home the next morning. Margaret was in the sunroom, knitting something blue and crooked.
“Jeremy,” she said, patting the seat beside her. “I wondered when you’d come.”
“He’s suing me, Margaret. Tim. He says I tricked her.”
