Chapter 4

The lawyer's office was on the second floor of a brick building three blocks from the river, and it smelled of old carpet and older files. Doyle had visited it twice in his life: once with his father, to sign a durable power of attorney, and once alone, to be told that his father had left two documents and one of them had a condition.

The woman behind the desk was maybe fifty-five, gray-streaked hair pulled back tight, reading glasses on a chain. She stood when he came in and did not smile.

"Mr. Boatwright," she said. "I've been expecting you."

"Did my mother call?"

"She called. She said you had the proof of the condition and she wanted to know if it was enforceable."

Doyle sat down in the chair across from her, the one with the worn arms that had held a hundred people being told what a dead person had decided. "And is it?"

"Enforceable and self-executing." The lawyer sat down too, and folded her hands on the desk. "I drafted the contract language myself. The conversion is automatic. The moment your mother said the words, in public, with witnesses, the annuity became a lump sum and the funds were earmarked for transfer. It's already done."

"Already done," Doyle repeated.

"The account is a brokerage account with a designated beneficiary. The lump sum is being moved into a separate trust in Wanda's name, with her as the sole trustee. There is nothing your mother can do to stop it, and nothing she can do to undo it. The condition was designed to be triggered by exactly the kind of public claim your mother made, and it was designed to be irrevocable."

Doyle looked at the lawyer and saw, in the flatness of her gaze, the same recognition he had seen in the pastor's face that morning — a man who had planned something, and a woman who had watched it happen.

"You knew," he said. "You knew what my father was writing."