Chapter 11: The Trustee Resigns

I walked out of my father's dining room without a word.

Malcolm followed me down the front steps.

I made it to the curb before my legs gave out, and I sat down.

He stopped a few feet away.

He didn't touch me, and he didn't speak.

I had never been so grateful for a man who knew when to stand still.

"Take me to Sausalito," I said.

"Gillian."

"Not here. I'm not doing this on their street."

We drove across the bridge in the dark, and neither of us said a thing.

In the kitchen, he turned on one light over the stove and put a brown envelope on the scarred table.

"Open it," he said.

I did.

It was a single typed page, signed in black ink.

It was a letter of resignation as trustee of my mother's will, effective on the thirtieth of May.

The date at the top was this morning.

"I signed it before dinner," Malcolm said.

"I wanted you to have it before you asked."

I put the paper down.

"You didn't tell me you were paid."

"I should have. I thought it was the least important thing I could say, and I've been wrong about that all week."

"Two percent a year, for fifteen years."

"Your mother set the fee."

He leaned on the counter, his hands tight on the edge.

"I took every dollar and put it in an account in your name."

"It's never been touched. You'll find it on the thirtieth, with the rest."

I stared at him.

"Every dollar?"

"Every one," he said. "The first year I was twenty-one and lived on instant noodles. I didn't want it."

"You could have told me that at dinner."

"With your father watching?" He gave a short, humorless laugh.

"He wanted a fight. I'd have been proving his point."

I wanted to be furious.

I was furious, for a moment.

Then I thought of him at my father's table with the knife pointed at him.

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