In Sickness and in Lies novel · Chapter 27 of 32
Chapter 27: The Ring Box
Bruce drove, and neither of us said anything on the way to Oak Park.
The hall outside my mother's room smelled of coffee and floor wax.
Desmond sat in the visitor's chair with a bouquet of white roses across his knees.
A small velvet box lay on my mother's blanket, and beside it a single typed page.
The night nurse stood in the doorway with her arms folded, and the speech therapist had come in early and stayed.
"Gwyneth," Desmond said, without turning. "Good. You should hear this."
I stopped in the doorway, and Bruce stopped behind me.
My mother was sitting up with her glasses on.
Her left hand held the page.
"Myrna," Desmond said warmly, "I'm asking you as family. The trust is a formality. You sign as trustee, and I serve as co-trustee until the auditors finish. Gwyneth is exhausted. She's being used by people who don't love her."
"Read it," I said quietly.
"She's reading it."
My mother was.
She moved her eyes down the page one line at a time, and her lips moved on the hard words.
Nobody hurried her.
The therapist glanced at the clock, and the nurse looked at the ceiling.
It took almost three minutes.
"Myrna, it's one signature," Desmond said. "It's what you did before."
"Yes," my mother said.
Her voice was slow, but every word came out whole.
"I signed for Walter. Without reading. I trusted... a boy at my table."
"Myrna."
"I read now." She let the page fall to the blanket. "It says you control... Gwyneth's shares. No."
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