Our Father by Marilyn French

something like that.”
    “Well surely they’d share it with their dear loving mother,” Elizabeth sneered.
    “Oh god.” Mary was too distraught to retaliate. “We have to find out!” she burst out.
    “We can’t. Hollis made it clear he won’t tell us. The only way we can find out is by finding the will. And we can’t do that unless we can get into the safe.”
    “Hire a safecracker,” Ronnie joked.
    “Know one?” Elizabeth asked coolly.
    Ronnie flushed.
    “Aren’t we entitled to something by law? Being his daughters?”
    “Not if he specifically cuts us out.”
    Mary considered. “We definitely haven’t been the most attentive daughters.”
    “He won’t cut us out entirely,” Elizabeth asserted. “We’re his blood. But he may leave us small annuities. We’re girls after all, expected to find husbands to support us.” She turned to Ronnie. “Your attitude suggests you don’t expect to be acknowledged in his will.”
    Ronnie gave her a long cold look.
    “So why are you hanging around?” Mary wanted to know.
    Ronnie looked at her with hate.
    “For the same reason I am,” Alex said quietly.
    All of them looked at her. She looked steadily at them.
    “To get to know you. All of you.”
    “For heaven’s sake, why?” asked Elizabeth after a pause.
    Have to have something to do, can’t just sit in my room, can’t be around them much, why am I staying here, what am I doing? Ronnie picked up and put down one book, leaflet, packet of papers after another. Organize my research data, start to write the goddamned dissertation. Read the material I didn’t get to last year. Make up a schedule for myself, stop wandering around this house like a lost child. Could she be right? Am I staying to get to know them? Why? What do I want from them? Elizabeth always in His study, Mary lounging in the sun room reading, Alex out walking for hours, walked all the way into town to get a library card, plenty of books here, mostly unread. Otherwise hides in her room like me, no place to go, all these rooms and no place to go. Drawing room with that stiff French furniture, can’t relax there, why did He call it the drawing room? Out of a nineteenth-century novel: what in hell’s a drawing room? No one ever drew there that I saw. Sitting room, anyone could walk in, see you there. So what? I am a member of this family, Alex says so, I can go anywhere now.
    Or is it for Him after all that we’re here, something we want from Him. Acknowledgment?
    I HEREBY DECREE THAT RONALDA VELEZ IS MY NATURAL DAUGHTER, A LOVE CHILD, BECAUSE I LOVED HER MOTHER, THAT DEAR SOUL WHO TOOK SUCH GOOD CARE OF ME UNTIL SHE BECAME MORTALLY ILL, WHO CARED MORE ABOUT ME THAN SHE DID ABOUT THAT DAUGHTER WHO HAS THEREBY BEEN DOUBLY DISPOSSESSED.
    Ridiculous. Will never happen.
    I could clean out Momma’s room, get rid of her things, such as they are. Take them to a church or some charity. Even a poor woman would probably turn up her nose at them.
    Her eyes filled. Can’t.
    She sat on the narrow bed and leaned back against the headboard. Servants room in the kitchen wing, narrow, shabby, but with a window facing the overgrown kitchen garden. Bed, dresser, hard-backed chair. But at least it has a desk, well table really. “Momma, I need a desk! I have to have someplace to do homework, we have to write a Paper, Momma, a Paper! When I work at the kitchen table, everything gets spots on it! It’s important, Momma!” Her homework on lined paper, food-stained, other kids typed theirs by seventh grade on nice neat clean white paper without lines. Couldn’t tell her, couldn’t ask for a typewriter; make her feel bad. Always tried not to make her feel bad. But then I’d burst out in fury at her at some stupid inconsequential thing. Sudden spurt of rage. Way she looked at me, dark brown eyes, she’d shake her head so sadly, sometimes she’d just open her arms while I was screaming at her, and I’d throw myself into them and she’d hold me and we’d