“No!”
He jolts. “Please, lower your voice. Don’t panic. We can discuss this calmly.”
“I won’t ever go back there,” I growl.
He purses his lips. “There are conditions, Miss Cole, to the trust. Do you understand what that means?”
“I don’t care.”
He eyes me, speculative. I imagine he finds my outburst petulant, that he dislikes being saddled with the sad offspring of a once-powerful man, now an abiding nuisance in his life. But he wasn’t there. He hasn’t seen what I have. He’d understand if he had. “Miss Cole. You are the beneficiary, but you cannot receive any distributions unless and until you accommodate your grandfather’s conditions.”
I close my eyes and whimper. This can’t be happening.
“There are three,” he tells me. “You must keep your maiden name—Cole—even in the event of marriage,” he says. “It was important to your grandfather that your grandmother live on in name if not in body. As you know, he resisted giving her his name when they wed to maintain as much of her…original characteras possible. And likewise even resisted giving his own child, yourmother, his name.”
I shake my head and press my fists into my ears. My grandfather’s gesture might seem progressive to someone like Mr. Lampitt, but he doesn’t know the obsession behind it. How he wanted to bottle my grandmother like liniment, preserve her like a specimen in a jar. How even the conception of his own child—my mother—sent him into a howling rage, watching her body change day by day, knowing he was sharing her, splitting her into slices in his mind like a pie chart. Later, he would recant his fury and be glad a shining testament to her lived on, a new focus for his affliction. But I can’t explain these things to the attorney.
“You must conserve Solidago as a legal residence, regardless of any other properties you acquire or occupy,” he continues. “Once it’s reconstructed, of course. And maintain it as closely to its primary state as possible.”
“Please stop,” I whimper.
“And finally…this.” He pops the latches on the case he’s been balancing across his knees. Lifting the lid, he bids me glance inside. There, against a lining of black velvet, rests my grandmother’s portrait, the one that once hung over the fireplace in her bedroom, full of grace and malice. Impossibly, it is untouched by the fire, the canvas tight and snug, the pigments bright and fine, the image cold and unblemished.
He closes the lid again and looks at me. “You must, Miss Cole, take possession of your grandmother’s likeness and hold it for the remainder of your days, willing it to another—preferably a biological descendant—before your own demise.”
I choke out a sound, part groan and part sob. “I can’t.”
“I will have it delivered wherever we decide is best for you to reside until reconstruction is complete,” he says, ignoring me. “Then, we will bring both you and the portrait back home to live at Solidago.”
“No.” This time, I sound strong, resolute.
He sighs. “They are heirlooms, Miss Cole. The house, the painting… Even if you don’t appreciate them now, you will intime. As relics of your family if nothing else. It is a small price to pay for everything you will be acquiring.”
What does he know of the price I’ve paid, will pay now forever? What does he know of family heirlooms, things passed down from one generation to the next, like whispers in the dark? “I won’t,” I clarify.
“Won’t what?” he snaps, a little tense.
“I won’t bear that name or that place or that portrait.” I claw my nails into the mattress beneath me, feeling the scratchy sheets strain against them. My knuckles scream.
Carefully, he latches the case. “Then you will have no money, no people, and no place to live. You will be an orphan, Miss Cole—a ward of the state. You will enter the foster system where you will be shipped from one dysfunctional house to another, suffering one abuse after another, if you are lucky enough to be fostered at all. And when you turn eighteen, you will be unceremoniously dumped on the street with nowhere to go and no way to get there.”
I glare at him.
He holds up his hands. “In one hand I am holding everything you could ever dream of. In the other, your worst nightmare. You choose, Miss Cole. I’d say the choice is easy.”
Unfortunately, he has it crossed. The hand he thinks is full of dreams is a one-way ticket to hell. The hand he imagines to be a nightmare is my path to freedom. “What happens if I don’t accept?”
He looks at me as if I’ve spoken in a dead language. “If you refuse to abide by your grandfather’s terms, then your holdings will remain just that—holdings. They will sit and they will grow, but you won’t have access to them until you take up Mr. Bates’s rules. The same will go for your children, should you have any.”
“So, it’s still mine?” I ask.
“Technically but not practically. It will exist in legal limbo.”
I take a breath, try to steady myself.
He looks tired suddenly, his face falling. “Look, Miss Cole,I know you don’t know me from Adam. But believe me when I tell you, you want to accept. You do not want to be alone in the world, subject to the state government and all its defunct systems. Things can’t end well for you that way. In fact, they can go very,verybadly. I know you’ve endured a trauma, and this is a lot to absorb. But I’m begging you—don’t make things harder for yourself than they already are. The money is a comfort, trust me. It cannot bring your family back, but it can keep you off the streets, keep you safe and fed. And later, when you’re ready, it can do so much more—education, travel, whatever you desire. A life most people can’t even fathom. Don’t throw it all away.”
I turn from him. “Please leave.”
