A Will and a Way

halfheartedly with the tissue just before her gaze wandered over to cousin Michael. Or was it second cousin Michael? She’d never been able to get the technical business straight. It seemed a bit foolish when you weren’t talking blood relation anyway. His mother had been Uncle Jolley’s niece by Jolley’s son’s second marriage. It was a complicated state of affairs, Pandora thought. But then Michael Donahue was a complicated man.
    They’d never gotten along, though she knew Uncle Jolley had favored him. As far as Pandora was concerned, anyone who made his living writing a silly television series that kept people glued to a box rather than doing something worthwhile was a materialistic parasite. She had a momentary flash of pleasure as she remembered telling him just that.
    Then, of course, there were the women. When a man dated centerfolds and showgirls it was obvious he wasn’t interested in intellectual stimulation. Pandora smiled as she recalled stating her view quite clearly the last time Michael had visited Jolley’s Folley. Uncle Jolley had nearly fallen off his chair laughing.
    Then her smile faded. Uncle Jolley was gone. And if she was honest, which she was often, she’d admit that of all the people in the room at that moment, Michael Donahue had cared for and enjoyed the old man more than anyone but herself.
    You’d hardly know that to look at him now, she mused. He looked disinterested and slightly arrogant. She noticed the set, grim line around his lips. Pandora had always consideredDonahue’s mouth his best feature, though he rarely smiled at her unless it was to bare his teeth and snarl.
    Uncle Jolley had liked his looks, and had told Pandora so in his early stages of matchmaking. A hobby she’d made sure he’d given up quickly. Well, he hadn’t given it up precisely, but she’d ignored it all the same.
    Being rather short and round himself, perhaps Jolley had appreciated Donahue’s long lean frame, and the narrow intense face. Pandora might have liked it herself, except that Michael’s eyes were often distant and detached.
    At the moment he looked like one of the heroes in the action series he wrote—leaning negligently against the wall and looking just a bit out of place in the tidy suit and tie. His dark hair was casual and not altogether neat, as though he hadn’t thought to comb it into place after riding with the top down. He looked bored and ready for action. Any action.
    It was too bad, Pandora thought, that they didn’t get along better. She’d have liked to have reminisced with someone about Uncle Jolley, someone who appreciated his whimsies as she had.
    There was no use thinking along those lines. If they’d elected to sit together, they’d have been picking little pieces out of each other by now. Uncle Jolley, smirking down from his portrait, knew it very well.
    With a half sigh she blew her nose again and tried to listen to Fitzhugh. There was something about a bequest to whales. Or maybe it was whalers.
    Another hour of this, Michael thought, and he’d be ready tochew raw meat. If he heard one more whereas … On a long breath, Michael drew himself in. He was here for the duration because he’d loved the crazy old man. If the last thing he could do for Jolley was to stand in a room with a group of human vultures and listen to long rambling legalese, then he’d do it. Once it was over, he’d pour himself a long shot of brandy and toast the old man in private. Jolley had had a fondness for brandy.
    When Michael had been young and full of imagination and his parents hadn’t understood, Uncle Jolley had listened to him ramble, encouraged him to dream. Invariably on a visit to the Folley, his uncle had demanded a story then had settled himself back, bright-eyed and eager, while Michael wove on. Michael hadn’t forgotten.
    When he’d received his first Emmy for Logan’s Run , Michael had flown from L.A. to the Catskills and had given the statuette to his uncle. The Emmy was still in the old man’s bedroom, even if the old man wasn’t.
    Michael listened to the dry impersonal attorney’s voice and wished for a cigarette. He’d only given them up two days before. Two days, four hours and thirty-five minutes. He’d have welcomed the raw meat.
    He felt stifled in the room with all these people. Every one of them had thought old Jolley was half-mad and a bit of a nuisance. The one hundred fifty-million-dollar estate was different. Stocks and bonds were extremely