The Final Victim by Wendy Corsi Staub Page A

would grow up to be a glum, pessimistic adult. But not Melanie.
    She even wound up on the streets for a few years, and has alluded to doing whatever was necessary to stay alive. Then, she said, along came a wealthy older gentleman who took her under his wing, got her an apartment, put her through nursing school.
    â€œIf it weren’t for him, Jeanne, who knows where I’d be?” she likes to ask. She also likes to answer. “I know where I’d be. Dead .”
    Jeanne would be very interested to know more about the mysterious benefactor who saved her. Whenever Melanie mentions him, Jeanne notices that she fails to reveal even his first name—and senses that the oversight is deliberate. Jeanne can’t help but sense an uncharacteristic reticence that hints there might be pertinent details Melanie isn’t sharing. But asking about the man would open the door to reciprocal interaction—and perhaps, emotional complications—that Jeanne just doesn’t need.
    Certainly not now, when she has a difficult decision weighing on her mind.
    Decision?
    What decision?
    You know what you have to do, Jeanne. You always knew what you’d do if it came down to this . . .
    But not yet.
    Not when there’s still a chance.
    â€œWould you like to get back into bed now, and take a nap?”
    She shakes her head at Melanie’s query, preferring to remain here in the window, where she can watch the driveway below.
    They all left a short time ago, separately, in pairs. First Charlotte and her daughter, then Phyllida and Gib, followed shortly by Phyllida’s husband whose name Jeanne can’t recall, toting their young son and a beach umbrella.
    Charlotte’s husband, Royce, left hours earlier in his silver Audi, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase as he does most mornings—probably going to his office if it’s a weekday.
    Is it a weekday?
    Where is Royce’s office?
    What does he even do?
    If Jeanne ever knew, she can’t remember.
    Nor is it important.
    â€œWhat day is it?” she asks the nurse, bustling somewhere behind her.
    â€œDid you say something, Jeanne?” Melanie is instantly at her side, eager to be engaged in conversation.
    â€œWhat day is it?” Jeanne is careful to maintain a monotone this time.
    â€œThe date? Let’s see, it must be July—”
    â€œNo, the day. What day? Saturday, or . . . ?”
    â€œOh, it’s Tuesday.”
    Tuesday .
    A weekday.
    Her grandnephew and both grandnieces were dressed in dark-colored, professional-looking suits.
    They’re going to the lawyer’s office, Jeanne concludes, momentarily pleased with her detective work.
    Then, as she acknowledges what that means—Gilbert’s will is about to be read—the tapioca pudding goes into a spin cycle in her stomach.
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    In all his years as an attorney, Tyler Hawthorne has never faced the reading of a will with as much trepidation as he does now, as he paces his Drayton Street office.
    It isn’t just because he and Gilbert Xavier Remington II had been friends since childhood. When they lost Silas Neville—the third member of the close-knit group formed in a boarding school dormitory almost eighty Septembers ago—Tyler was mostly just sorrowful.
    Then again, Silas’s will was straightforward; no surprises there. He left everything to Betsy, his fourth wife, who spent more time fluttering around Savannah than she did at Silas’s bedside during his last months on earth, after the stroke that paralyzed just about every function but his speech. As Betsy so eloquently phrased it, “I’ve always been a little squeamish. Those hospice nurses are much better at this kind of thing than I am.”
    If Tyler had any anxieties about the prospect of reading Silas’s will, they were based on the fear that Betsy might put her hand on his thigh beneath the table, as she was reputedly inclined to do even when her