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.
"What day is it?" she asks the nurse, bustling somewhere behind her.
"Did you say something, Jeanne?" Melanie is instantly at her side, eager to be engaged in conversation.
"What day is it?"Jeanne is careful to maintain a monotone this time.
"The date? Let's see, it must be July-"
"No, the day. What day? Saturday, or…?"
"Oh, 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.
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 husband was alive.
It didn't happen. The will was read without a hitch- and Betsy went on to get rehitched just six months later, to a man her own age-or perhaps a decade younger. As Gilbert dryly stated at the time, he probably needed someone to pay his college tuition.
I miss you already, Gilbert.
And you, too, Silas .
This world seems to get lonelier with every passing week.
Tyler is acutely aware of his status as a widower himself, and as sole survivor of a lifelong threesome referred to back in their boarding school days as the Telfair Trio. He sinks into his leather swivel chair behind the mahogany desk at which two previous generations of Hawthornes practiced law.
The days of standing weekly golf games and lunches at the club with Silas and Gilbert were long gone well before his friends died. But despite having drifted with old age from their social and recreational rituals, the bond forged four score-give or take a year or two- ago, remained.
The trio staged some risky schoolboy pranks and escapades in their days at Telfair Academy-always knowing they had each other's backs.
That loyalty-that willingness to cover for each other, even if it meant lying to an authority figure, or a spouse- lingered into adulthood. They knew each other's deepest and, in some cases, darkest secrets.
Thanks to Silas and Gilbert, Tyler's beloved Marjorie went to her deathbed never knowing of his foolish, youthful indiscretions.
And thanks to Silas and Tyler putting their own careers as doctor and lawyer on the line, Gilbert's family fortune remains intact-and, perhaps even more importantly, the Remington name untarnished.
Perhaps it was the
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.
"What day is it?" she asks the nurse, bustling somewhere behind her.
"Did you say something, Jeanne?" Melanie is instantly at her side, eager to be engaged in conversation.
"What day is it?"Jeanne is careful to maintain a monotone this time.
"The date? Let's see, it must be July-"
"No, the day. What day? Saturday, or…?"
"Oh, 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.
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 husband was alive.
It didn't happen. The will was read without a hitch- and Betsy went on to get rehitched just six months later, to a man her own age-or perhaps a decade younger. As Gilbert dryly stated at the time, he probably needed someone to pay his college tuition.
I miss you already, Gilbert.
And you, too, Silas .
This world seems to get lonelier with every passing week.
Tyler is acutely aware of his status as a widower himself, and as sole survivor of a lifelong threesome referred to back in their boarding school days as the Telfair Trio. He sinks into his leather swivel chair behind the mahogany desk at which two previous generations of Hawthornes practiced law.
The days of standing weekly golf games and lunches at the club with Silas and Gilbert were long gone well before his friends died. But despite having drifted with old age from their social and recreational rituals, the bond forged four score-give or take a year or two- ago, remained.
The trio staged some risky schoolboy pranks and escapades in their days at Telfair Academy-always knowing they had each other's backs.
That loyalty-that willingness to cover for each other, even if it meant lying to an authority figure, or a spouse- lingered into adulthood. They knew each other's deepest and, in some cases, darkest secrets.
Thanks to Silas and Gilbert, Tyler's beloved Marjorie went to her deathbed never knowing of his foolish, youthful indiscretions.
And thanks to Silas and Tyler putting their own careers as doctor and lawyer on the line, Gilbert's family fortune remains intact-and, perhaps even more importantly, the Remington name untarnished.
Perhaps it was the
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