Chapter 22: Done

Howard Drummond did not get bail.

Adele turned herself in on Monday morning with a lawyer on each arm, and she was charged by lunch.

By Friday the Drummond name was on every front page in the state, and the word mistake was in none of them.

On Friday afternoon we sat in the waiting room of the county building, the four of us on a plastic bench.

Amos had come from rehab in a wheelchair with a blanket on his knees, grumbling about it.

Conroy sat at the end of the row with his bandaged wrist in his lap.

The Drummond family lawyer stood in front of us with a leather folder.

He looked ten years older than he had on Marl Street.

"Miss Poppy," he said. "Mrs. Drummond has signed over her half of the family's property. The court has frozen the rest."

"What does that mean?" Poppy said.

"It means you are the legal heir of what is left."

He opened the folder.

"The house on Carrick Hill. The foundation. Your name goes on all of it."

She looked at the paper for a while.

"I don't want the name."

"It comes with a great deal of money."

"I don't want that either." She uncapped the pen he held out. "Does it say what it can go to?"

"It can go to a charitable purpose of your choosing."

She wrote for a minute.

When she handed it back, I read it over her shoulder.

It left the Carrick Hill house to the city as a shelter for new mothers.

It paid for a new neonatal wing at St. Brendan's.

And it paid for Amos Lacey's rehabilitation, for as long as he wanted it.

"Poppy," Amos said, behind us.

"Dad, I'm not asking."

"I'm too old to be a charity."

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