Chapter 25: The Guest List

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said. "I'll be there."

In the hall outside, Valerie passed me with her son on her hip and Bradford two steps behind her.

She stopped close enough that I could smell her perfume.

"Wear something nice," she said. "There'll be cameras."

That night I sat at the long table in the firehouse kitchen with the probie's old pie notebook open in front of me.

The whole crew was there, both shifts, twelve men eating my pot roast.

"April 9," I said. "If Margo is in that house, I'm in that house."

"Okay," Cormac said.

"And so are you. All of you."

The lieutenant put his fork down.

"As what?"

"As guests. The order says there'll be a party. It doesn't say who's invited."

I wrote at the top of a clean page.

GUEST LIST.

Engine 41. Both shifts.

Gran.

My lawyer.

One working sprinkler.

The probie read it upside down.

"A sprinkler's not a guest," he said.

"It's the most important guest. It doesn't drink and it doesn't leave early."

The big guy was already crying a little.

"I've never been invited to a rich person's house," he said.

"You're not invited yet. Gran has to invite you."

Gran had taken the trust back in January.

Her neurologist wrote a letter that said she was competent, and she had it framed.

The Sunday after the hearing, at her table on Beacon Hill, I showed her the list.

She read it with her reading glasses on the end of her nose.

"The house belongs to the trust," she said slowly. "My husband bought it in 1958. My grandson lives in it because I let him."

"Then you can host the party."

"I can host anything I like." She took a pen from her handbag. "Twelve firemen. A lawyer. A sprinkler." She looked up. "Is the sprinkler a person?"