Clare will ask where her parents are buried. (If indeed they are buried. Anywhere.) A visit to a cemetery here in Cardiff. As in a dreamy photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, the day will be gray, ghostly, overcast, pelting rain.
With childish tenacity and defiance, not allowing herself to think. But maybe one of them is alive, at least. That is possible.
How relieved Clare is to leave the heavy-browed cobblestone house on Acton Avenue!
Outside, the air is much fresher. She can breathe more deeply. The overcast sky seems to be opening in layers of translucent cloud. She glances about, wondering if she might see—who? A limping figure . . .
But no. No one.
Driving to Lucius Fischer’s office in downtown Cardiff. Her appointment is at eleven a.m., and she is anxious not to be late. Her thoughts are disorganized, distracting. No idea what to think of the great-aunts—if they are on her side.
She tells herself not to be ridiculous. Of course the elderly women mean well. They are annoying, exasperating—but essentially, they are her friends.
Yet—it has seemed to Clare that the two of them are sometimes mocking her. Laughing at her, evilly.
When she tries to recall what they’d told her about her parents, she cannot. There is a kind of scrim close against her face—through which she can’t see and can’t hear.
Are they living, or—not? Please tell me.
She is still feeling shaky after the fit of vomiting. Most of her nausea has faded, though the gluey nugget of oatmeal remains in her gut.
She thinks that she will move out of the Donegal house that afternoon. Following her appointment with Fischer. Can’t risk another meal there. Even if they are not trying to poison her, the food they give her may be tainted, spoiled.
Depending upon what Lucius Fischer tells her, she may decide to return to Bryn Mawr the next morning.
Forfeit the inheritance, just possibly. Yes.
A sudden decision. Like snatching up a knife, slashing her own throat.
As she’d once told a lover—abruptly—That’s it. Enough. I think we are through.
Her only inheritance. Her only connection with blood relatives. Her connection with her (deceased) parents.
Still, she might forfeit it. She doesn’t need the Donegals in her life. She has lived most of her life without them, why should she be vulnerable to them now?
The way Gerard Donegal shoved back his chair, heaved himself to his feet, turned his back on her, walked out. My father’s brother. No connection between us. Why should there be? Nothing.
Though Clare left the house on Acton Avenue with more than enough time to drive a mere two miles, she finds herself late for the appointment after all. To her astonishment it is nearly eleven by the time she locates State Street, the main street of Cardiff. Then she is caught in a maze of narrow one-way streets downtown and in a long stream of vehicles, as slow and somber as a funeral procession, routed onto a single lane through an endless construction site. Then, on foot, having parked her car, she can’t locate the address she has been given, running desperately along a sidewalk in a neighborhood of razed buildings surrounded by rubble . . .
Late! She will be late after all.
Goddamn. Why’d you do it? Answer a ringing phone without knowing the caller.
That was the original mistake.
9.
“Ms. Seidel! Please take a seat.”
Lucius Fischer shakes Clare’s hand briskly. Releases it in virtually the same instant. So matter-of-fact, regarding her with bemused eyes, Clare understands in an instant that there can be no rapport between her and this middle-aged lawyer, no special bond. Something that has been bunched and tense in her chest sinks, slides down in a trickling heap, like sand.
What a fool she is! Over the phone Lucius Fischer’s deep-baritone voice had cast a sort of spell over her. As if she’d expected, in remote Cardiff, a place of which she’d never heard until recently, to discover some sort of (improbable) romance, sexual intrigue.
A friend, at least. Someone who might care for her.
Fischer had seemed to be confiding in her on the phone. She hadn’t imagined that—had she?
He’d seemed to be promising her—I will guide you through this, Clare. You can trust me.
Carefully, Fischer explains that he is the executor of Maude Donegal’s estate as well as the lawyer who’d drawn up Maude Donegal’s will. He explains that the will is unusually complicated, asit had been rewritten several times over a period of twenty years.
“There was an original will, drawn up by an older partner in this office,” Fischer says, naming a name that means nothing to Clare and makes no impression upon her, “but that original will has been changed of course. And after Leland Donegal’s death, again changed.”
Clare wonders why she is being given this information. Is there a mystery of some kind involving her grandmother’s will? Some sort of legal irregularity? She is intrigued as Fischer speaks of the Lacey sisters, Elspeth and Morag—“your formidable great-aunts—spinster sisters of a bygone era.” Both Elspeth and Morag earned degrees in education from the University of Maine in the 1960s. Both had careers as public school teachers. Elspeth was a middle school principal, much admired (and feared). Morag taught math and advised the school archery team. Both women were active in their parish church, St. Cuthbert’s. Their nephew Gerard—Maude Donegal’s younger son—had been a Jesuit seminarian in Portland in his early twenties.
“As a young man, Gerard was very promising, it’s said. Of course, I didn’t know Gerard then—I only became aware of him afterward.”
Afterward? Clare notes this.
Fischer tells Clare that he’d known the Donegal family initially through Leland Donegal, who’d become his client upon the retirement of an older partner in Fischer’s law firm. Leland had inherited the Donegal family lumber business—“one of those old Maine families whose fortunes were made by cutting down Maine forests”—and was very well-to-do by Cardiff standards.
As it turned out, Leland hadn’t cared for business. He’d wanted to be a renowned philanthropist, like the Carnegies and the Rockefellers. He’d given away what must have been millions of dollars in all—scholarships for local high school students, museums and colleges, hospitals, the Church—until at last the money began to run out.
“Evidently there was some ‘awkwardness.’ Leland had pledged to give a million dollars to the Jesuit seminary where Gerard was a student, but—he had to break the pledge, which was humiliating to the family. And some other pledges, as well.”
Clare would like to know more about the young Gerard: Had he been so unsociable at the time, in some way handicapped, disfigured? Or had something happened to him afterward? But she doesn’t want to impress Lucius Fischer as an inquisitive person.