“Who’ll contest it, Elliot?”
“You want my guess? David.”
“Why should he?”
“Why should he, huh? Because he’ll think you were out of your bloody mind when you signed it, that’s why. Look at it, Julia. You’ve left half of your estate to be held in trust by a man named Giovanni Fabrizzi quote in the secure knowledge that he will disperse it as agreed upon in prior discussions unquote. Now, what kind of a legal document is that? He can spend the money on a villa somewhere and then claim that was in agreement with your prior discussions. Who’ll ever know what you told Fabrizzi?”
“I trust him,” Julia said. “I’ve trusted him all these years, and I can trust him now.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” Elliot said. “Not when it comes to a will. Not when it comes to an estate the size of yours.”
“There’s only one person who could possibly object to the will, and that’s David. And I don’t think he’s that kind of person. Besides, he’s taken care of adequately.”
“Sure, with half your estate. And the other half goes to a guy in Italy named Giovanni Fabrizzi, and you think David isn’t going to raise a fuss? Julia, don’t tell me about people and estates. Don’t tell me about people and money.”
“I still think—”
“And what do you know about Fabrizzi, other than that he’s handled a penny-ante transaction over the past sixteen and a half years? This is real money, Julia, this is better than three-quarters of a million dollars. That damn spaghetti-bender may just—”
“Don’t talk that way, Elliot.”
“I’m sorry. But I don’t trust him. You want this money to go where it’s supposed to, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then don’t trust Fabrizzi.”
“How else can I—?”
“I’d like you to change the will. I’d like it to read ‘to be held in trust by Giovanni Fabrizzi pursuant to a separate agreement between Mr. Fabrizzi and the testatrix.’” He reached for another document on his desk, handed it to Julia, and said, “This is a rough draft of the separate agreement. It tells exactly where the estate goes, and when. Nothing vague about it, Julia. I’d like you to send it to Fabrizzi for his signature.”
“Nothing vague about it,” she said, and she nodded. “And when I die, Elliot? What happens to this agreement that is anything but vague?”
“One copy stays locked in my safe, and another stays locked in Fabrizzi’s. There are such things as secret trusts, Julia. And if a separate document is mentioned in the will, David won’t have a leg to stand on.”
“And if he contests it, you’ll have to show the separate document, won’t you?”
“No, I doubt it. A will contest very rarely involves the provisions of a will. Your son can’t say such and such a provision is no good simply because it doesn’t happen to appeal to him. He would have to base his contest on trying to prove you were mentally incompetent when you made the will, or that undue influence was exerted on you, or something of that nature. But this wouldn’t necessitate showing the separate agreement, which is a part of one of the will’s provisions. In fact, the separate agreement would be testimony to your mental stability. Only an idiot would leave half her estate to a man three thousand miles away on the basis of a verbal agreement.”
“I wouldn’t want—”
“Julia, I know what you wouldn’t want. This is Elliot Tulley.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll think about it, Elliot.”
“I suggest you think about it very carefully. And I strongly suggest that you allow me to revise the will and to send the separate agreement off to Fabrizzi for his signature and approval. As your attorney, this is what I suggest.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Sure, it’s only money.” Elliot paused. “How’s everything else?”
“Fine.”
“What were you doing over at the travel agency day before yesterday?”
“Elliot, you should have been an FBI agent.”
“How do you know I’m not? Planning a trip, Julia?”
“Maybe.” She smiled and picked up her handbag.
“It wouldn’t be to Rome, would it?”
“Maybe.”
“It’s none of my business, Julia, but this is a small town, and a man who’s alert can’t help hearing things. Milt Anderson says your heart—”
“If I’m going to have a coronary, Elliot, I might just as well have it in Rome, don’t you think?”
“It’s your coronary,” Elliot said, shrugging. “Have it wherever the hell you want.” He paused. “I think it’s amazing you’ve managed to stay away all these years, anyway.”
“You have to be ready to go back, Elliot. Otherwise, there’s no sense going, is there?”
“I guess not. And you’re ready now, are you?”
“I’m fifty-six years old, Elliot. I want to see... I want to go back before I die.”
“Everyone wants to go back before he dies, Julia,” Elliot said. “Call me as soon as you’ve decided on the will, please. I want to make those changes as soon as possible.”
“Elliot, really,” Julia said, smiling. “I do have at least a few weeks, don’t you think?”
Kate Bridges was seventeen.
She had turned seventeen in November, and now it was March; she had been seventeen for four months and the change was remarkable only in that it was nothing at all like a metamorphosis. The person who emerged from the chrysalis of sixteen still resembled Kate, talked like Kate, moved like Kate, and yet was truly a different Kate, the change was indiscernible and perhaps a little disappointing.
But oh, it was good to be seventeen.
It was marvelous to be alive and at the peak of beauty, to have a strong body and uncomplaining muscles, an appetite for life and living. It was wonderful to know you could laugh robustly and cry in unashamed torment. It was good to be able to magnify all the minuscule problems of living, and shoulder none of its responsibilities, it was good to be young, it was good to be seventeen.
Nor was this Booth Tarkington’s seventeen, nor Eugene O’Neill’s, this was not that magic age, that long-awaited phase of adolescence when the braces came off and the kisses got longer. Oh yes, it still included idyllic dreams and fresh discoveries, visions of romance and high ideals, it was still all these things, but seventeen had changed. Kate had been born in 1942 while her father was being exploded on a navy destroyer. She had been nursed on the waning days of a world war, and weaned on the threat of another, and so war or the promise of war was part of the fabric of her life. And yet the adults had managed to do something to the concept, had robbed it of all its glamour and excitement. If war came, there would no longer be the agony of deprivation, the banners-and-music excitement of seeing a loved one off, the free-and-easy love-making in moments stolen from the battle front, the weeping alone while the guns echoed far away, the tragedy of death in combat, the excesses a seventeen-year-old could really appreciate. The adults, instead, had invented the ultimate excess, and now war only meant annihilation.
And in annihilation, there was democracy.
There had been a time, back in those swinging days that were the forties, when a sailor in a San Diego bar, a sailor headed for the Pacific where he could very easily have his head blown off, would not be served a glass of beer unless he could prove he was over twenty-one years old. It was still tough to get a drink in San Diego, but it was fairly simple to get one in your own living room if you were seventeen years old and blessed with modern parents who understood that physically you were capable of doing the same things they did, possibly better, and that mentally you were struggling with the same day-by-day possibility of extinction, with a great deal more to lose since you had experienced a great deal less in the short seventeen years of your life. When the hydrogen bomb fell, if it fell, no one was going to separate the women and children from the men. There would be a blinding flash and ten seconds to say your prayers, and everyone would wonder in those ten seconds who had pushed the button, goodbye Charlie.