He Married My Best Friend While I Gave Birth, So I Left novel · Chapter 42 of 48

Chapter 42: The Offer

Six of us sat around the old oak table on Tuesday night with papers spread between the coffee cups.

Byron's lawyer had brought his briefcase and a crate of pears, in case the Honeycrisps ran out.

Tara's lawyer was a young woman from the county legal aid office, in a gray blazer with one button missing.

She had charged Tara nothing, and she ate two rolls before she opened her folder.

The silver-haired woman sat at the foot of the table with her handbag on her knees.

She had asked for that chair, and nobody argued.

"Let me read the clause," said Tara's lawyer, "because everyone in this family keeps quoting it from memory."

She put on a pair of glasses.

"The voting shares of Angell Orchards pass to the first grandchild of the founder, to be held by a trustee until that grandchild is twenty-five."

"We know the clause," said Byron's lawyer.

"Then you know it says first. Not first legitimate, not first named on a form. First." She looked at me. "Ms. Mercer, a court appointed you trustee last winter because everyone believed that was Poppy."

"I know."

"Cal is sixteen years older than she is. The shares are his."

I looked at Tara, who had not touched her coffee.

"Eleanor's motion asks to be made his trustee," she said. "Grandmother, family, someone who loves him. That's the phrase."

"She's in prison," said Byron.

"She won't be on the ninth, if the judge buys what Cal wrote her." Tara's lawyer turned a page. "Which is why I want to be plain. Ms. Hobart does not want her son's trustee to be Eleanor Angell. Ms. Hobart would not mind if it stayed you."

"That's generous," I said.

"It's practical," said Tara, from her chair. "I'd rather have a woman who reads everything."

The silver-haired woman cleared her throat.

"The board has a different proposal," she said. "It came out of Friday's meeting. I made the motion myself."

She took a single sheet from her handbag and slid it across the oak.

"A clean split."

I read it twice.

It said that the voting block would go to Cal in trust, under a bank's care and not Eleanor's.

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