Chapter 19: Preston Falls

The probate judge gave us nine minutes on Friday morning.

She read the petition, read the doctor's letter, and looked over her glasses at Preston's lawyer in the gray suit.

"This is a thin letter to take away a woman's life," she said.

She stayed the petition until a doctor of the court could examine me.

Then she read the lab report from the swab I had given the detective.

"Identical to Lila Sedgwick," she said. "Counsel, your client's case rests on a dead girl who is sitting in my courtroom."

Anson's lawyer asked one more thing, and the judge granted it.

The grandfather's trust had named a living girl, not a dead one.

My father had voted it for eighteen years in the name of a headstone.

Its votes came back to me that morning.

At two o'clock I walked into the ballroom of the Sedgwick Grand as a shareholder.

It was the same room with the same gold chairs, and the same stage where the memorial screen had stood.

Three hundred people sat in rows with their paddles in their laps.

Preston took the chairman's seat at the long table in a charcoal suit, with his gold watch on his wrist.

He did not look at me. He had not looked at me since the atrium.

Anson sat three seats down with a folder, wearing his bored face.

"Item one," Preston said into the microphone. "A motion by Mr. Keyes to remove me from this board."

"I'd like to answer it first."

Nobody objected, because he was still the chairman.

He stood and drew a paper from his jacket.

"My family has been the victim of a cruel impersonation," he said.

"A court-appointed doctor will confirm that the woman in the third row is unwell."

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