Father Fever

She’d wanted to be a lawyer even as a child, but she hadn’t imagined that work would be the only thing in her life.

“Whoa!” Alexis whispered as a balding, mustachioed man pushed open the door. “Heads up! It’s Poirot!”

The man’s mustache was more of a simple brush than Poirot’s elaborate handlebar affair, but he was dark and small and close enough in appearance to the fictional detective for them to appreciate the whimsy. Athena was grateful for the light moment considering their sad purpose in being here.

The man walked into the room with a sheaf of papers and stood across the table from the sisters as he introduced himself.

“Good afternoon,” he said in slightly accented English that only served to heighten the Poirot effect. “Welcome to Portland. I’m…”

Then he seemed to forget who he was as his eyes went from Alexis to Athena, back to Alexis, on to Augusta, widening with every pass. “I’m, ah…”

“Bernard Pineau,” Athena said, taking charge. She’d been born nineteen minutes before Alexis, and thirty-seven minutes before Augusta. She’d always thought of herself as the eldest. “You’re Bernard Pineau. Didn’t Aunt Sadie tell you we’re identical triplets?”

“She did, yes,” he replied with a self-conscious laugh. “But knowing that and seeing it for oneself are two very different things. Please, pardon me for staring.”

Athena nodded. As children, she and her sisters had grown accustomed to the gasps and stares their identical appearances created. But now with careers on opposite coasts and Alexis on another continent, that seldom happened. There were moments when she missed it.

Athena introduced herself, then Lex and Gusty.

Pineau shook hands across the table and took his chair.

“You must be the lawyer from Washington, D.C.,” Pineau guessed, focusing on Athena. She wouldn’t have cared that he’d guessed, except that she knew he’d done it after a glance at her suit jacket—all that was visible above the table. It made her feel morose.

“Sadie was very proud of you,” he added sincerely.

Resentment fell away and she experienced a moment’s comfort. “Thank you.”

He studied the other two women, then smiled at Alexis. “You have the studio in Rome?”

Alexis nodded. “I do.”

“I have your Madonna 4 in my study at home,” he said. “Sadie gave it to me for my birthday. My wife and I treasure it.”

Alexis was surprised. “I’m glad. Aunt Sadie was my self-appointed PR person and one-man sales force.”

“She was.” He turned to Augusta.

“I’m the teacher,” she said. “In Pansy Junction, California. Third grade. I love it.”

He smiled indulgently at her. Augusta always inspired smiles.

Then he folded his hands atop the documents he’d brought with him and asked solicitously, “Would you like coffee before we begin?”

Three heads shook.

“We’ve just had lunch,” Athena explained.

He nodded. “Then, before we begin, let me offer my condolences on the loss of your aunt. I met her just a year ago when we first worked on this will, and I found her to be a most charming and enlightened woman.”

Athena opened her mouth to speak and discovered she had no voice.

“Thank you,” Alexis said. “We did, too.”

Pineau squared the pages on the table and began to read the formal legalese. “I, Sadie Richmond, being of sound mind…”

He read on and Athena and her sisters exchanged grim glances. There was no avarice here, no eagerness to know what Sadie had left to whom. Just a still profound disbelief that she was gone and a willingness to carry out her wishes.

“To Athena,” the lawyer said, turning over a page, “I leave my Tiffany watch with the diamond fleur-de-lis in the hope that looking at it will brighten her tight schedule. I also leave her my aquamarine-and-diamond bar brooch to dress up her serious suits.”

Athena closed her eyes and saw images of her aunt wearing the brooch on the shoulder of a smart black dress, on the lapel of her burgundy wool suit, on the blue blazer she’d worn to the Dancer’s Beach Regatta every summer.

Tears welled in Athena’s throat but she swallowed them.

“To Alexis,” Pineau continued, “I leave my entire collection of berets because she always complimented me on them and has the flair to wear them, herself. And I want her to have the Degas in the upstairs hall because she might have posed for it.”

Athena remembered the gilt-framed painting of a ballerina executing a grand jeté and thought the gift appropriate. Alexis always moved as though in ballet slippers.

A tear fell down Alexis’s cheek and Augusta covered her hand with her own.

“To Augusta, I leave my doll collection and the Steiff bear she cuddled with when her sisters were too much for her.”

Gusty nodded, her lips trembling dangerously. Alexis patted her back.

“I wish the girls to share whatever they would like of my clothes and my jewelry, then donate the rest to a women’s shelter. I apologize to them for the paltry contents of my savings account, but they know how I’ve loved my travels. I wish it and my few stocks to be divided equally among them.”

Pineau paused to take a breath.

Alexis and Augusta leaned back in thought and Athena let her mind drift to her favorite memory of Sadie. She was striding ahead of them up the beach at Cliffside, wearing pedal pushers and a T-shirt, her graying blond hair tied up in a scarf as she led them in the collection of shells and other ocean treasures.

Athena was lost in the moment, unaware that Pineau hadn’t covered everything until he said, a little quickly, she thought, “And to David Hartford, I leave Cliffside and all its furnishings.”

Athena’s eyes flew open. She turned to her sisters and saw the same shocked surprise she felt mirrored in their faces. There was a moment of stunned silence, then a loud and simultaneous “Who?”

“David Hartford,” Pineau repeated, tapping the document with the tips of his fingers. “A friend, apparently.”

The women stared at one another again. Athena, caught completely off balance, struggled to think.

But Alexis didn’t stop to think. “I’ve never heard of him,” she said, leaning forward across the table. “A friend from where? Dancer’s Beach?”

Pineau shook his head. “She didn’t say where she met him.”

“She never mentioned him to us.” Augusta looked from one sister to the other. Heads shook confirmingly. “You have to contact him about the will, Mr. Pineau,” Athena pointed out, an unidentified but unsettling suspicion forming in the pit of her stomach where her grief for Sadie ached. “You must know where he lives. And why isn’t he here?”

“I have contacted him. He lives in Chicago, but he wasn’t able to come to the reading. So, I’ve faxed him everything he has to know, and transferred the house into his name.”

Augusta and Alexis gasped simultaneously.

“When did Aunt Sadie change the will?” Athena asked. “We know that two years ago when we were all together at Christmas, she intended to leave Cliffside to the three of us. Not that we care about possession, but…it was a family home. Who is this guy?”