Chapter 6 - Walter Walks Into the Room
Harold scheduled a formal response meeting for the following Wednesday. He'd invited one extra person, he told me the morning before. Someone whose presence, he thought, would matter.
When I walked into the conference room, Walter Rourke was already sitting at the table.
He was seventy-one, broad through the shoulders, white-haired, with the kind of stillness that comes from a lifetime of never needing to prove anything to anyone. He stood when I came in, crossed the room, and took both my hands in his the way he had at the funeral — firm, steady, like a man holding something so it wouldn't drop.
"Cora," he said.
"Walter." My voice cracked on the second syllable. I hadn't seen him since the cemetery.
We sat. Harold laid it all out plainly: Vale's inquiry, the undue-influence claim, the strategy he believed my family was running.
Walter listened without cutting in once. When Harold finished, Walter laid both hands flat on the table.
"Let me be clear about something," he said. "Marcus came to me before he touched that estate plan. He sat at my kitchen table and told me exactly what he was going to do and exactly why. Nobody pushed him. Nobody confused him. He was the most deliberate man I ever knew in my life, and he loved this woman with everything he had." He paused. "I'll say that in front of anyone they want to put me in front of."
"That may be necessary," Harold said.
"Then it's necessary." Walter turned to me. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm angry," I said. "I keep waiting to feel something else. Mostly I just feel angry."
"Good," he said. "Stay angry. It's cleaner than sad right now."
Harold's assistant knocked and came in, set a printed page in front of him. He scanned it, then slid it to me.
"This came in this morning," he said. "Vale's escalating. They're now formally demanding a full accounting of every asset moved into the trust during the last three years of Marcus's life. They're hunting for one transaction they can call irregular."
Walter's jaw went tight. "On what basis?"
"They don't need a solid basis yet. They need just enough to justify discovery."
"And what does discovery mean for Cora?"
"It means they get to ask questions. Pull records. Put people under oath." Harold looked at me. "It means they get to make this as uncomfortable as they can for as long as they can."
I looked at the page, then up.
"Marcus's grandfather set that trust up in 1985," I said. "His father built it. Marcus inherited it. None of that happened while we were married. None of it has one thing to do with me influencing anybody."
"Correct," Harold said. "Which is why their argument is thin. But thin arguments can still cost a fortune."
"Then let it cost a fortune." I set the page down. "I'm not settling."
Walter made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. He looked at Harold. "She sounds like Marcus."
"She does," Harold agreed.
The meeting ran another hour and a half. By the end Harold had a full counter-response drafted, and Walter had agreed to give a signed written statement about what he knew of Marcus's intentions.
On the way out, Walter held the elevator for me.
"Can I ask you something?" I said as the doors slid shut.
"Anything."
"Did Marcus ever tell you what he wanted me to do after? With the money?"
Walter was quiet a moment. The elevator dropped.
"He said he wanted you to build something that would outlast the both of you." He looked at the doors. "Said he didn't care what it was, as long as it helped kids. Said you'd know."
The doors opened.
"I do know," I said.
Walter nodded once. Then he buttoned his coat slowly and walked out into the afternoon.
I stood in the lobby a minute, watching an ordinary Wednesday go by through the glass — people with coffee cups and phones, the city completely unaware.
Then my phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize.
May you like
*You should know your sister has been meeting with Vale's office. She's been there twice this week.*
I stared at it for a long time. Then I forwarded it to Harold and walked outside.
