Dead Certain

letterhead reads like the passenger list of the Mayflower. With its clubby leather furniture and somber paintings of dead partners, it could have easily doubled as a stage set for a play about the establishment. Needless to say, Mother looked right at home there.
    She also looked stunning. At fifty-three my mother had a face that most women would still kill for. Her signature dark mane was swept back from her forehead, framing her now-famous classic features. She was, as always, exquisitely dressed, this time in an elegant suit of charcoal wool subtly trimmed in black. It was just the sort of thing Coco Chanel might have designed for professional women, provided she could have found any willing to drop that kind of money on something to wear to the office.
    At the sight of me an all-too-familiar flicker of disappointment crossed my mother’s face. I tried not to let it bother me. It had taken a long time, but I’d finally come to terms with the fact that I am not merely a younger version of my mother, but a plainer one, and therefore doomed to forever fall short. The only consolation is that, of the two of us, it undoubtedly troubled her more.
    “Mother! What a pleasant surprise,” I lied, kissing the air beside her powdered cheek and smiling for the receptionist’s benefit. In a place where minutes were reckoned, movements recorded, and absences noted, news of my mother’s extraordinary visit was no doubt already crackling along the firm’s synapses. I had absolutely no intention of giving anyone any more to talk about.
    As I led the way back toward my office I did my best to make small talk, always tricky in our case since even neutral subjects had a way of quickly shifting to more dangerous ground. Playing it safe, I fell back on the usual attorney-client patter, prattling on about how we now had six hundred attorneys in Chicago alone and were in the process of opening a new office in Delhi. Mother, having been trained to feign interest practically since birth, listened politely. But I knew that my world, the world of people who work for a living, held little interest for her.
    As I ushered her into my office I noted with silent amusement that Cheryl had made a whirlwind effort to tidy up my usual chaos. Not only had she carted off as many files as she could carry, but she’d shoved the rest underneath my desk so that when I sat down, there was barely enough room for my legs.
    “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” I asked brightly.
    “I didn’t know that I needed a reason to visit my own daughter,” announced Mother.
    “Of course you don’t need a reason,” I replied sweetly. “But that still doesn’t mean you don’t have one.”
    “If you must know, I’ve just come from the hospital,” she declared, “and you and I have an important matter to discuss.”
    I felt my heart sink, but not for the reasons you might think. In my family, the word hospital meant only one thing—Prescott Memorial, the charitable institution founded by my mother’s great-grandfather and supported by every generation of Prescotts and Millhollands since. But that didn’t mean that Mother had dropped by to discuss medical care for the poor. The Founders Ball, the hospital’s annual fund-raiser and the charity event that traditionally marked the end of Chicago’s gala season, was this coming Saturday night. Having jettisoned Stephen from my life, my choice of escort had become the subject of seemingly endless debate. Mother, no longer content to plague me over the telephone, had apparently decided to intensify her efforts and begin harassing me in person.
    “Mother, please,” I began, appalled by how quickly I had been reduced to pleading, “this really isn’t a very good time.”
    “It never is, Kate,” she countered archly. “Perhaps you would have preferred it if I’d called ahead and made an appointment with your secretary?”
    I was tempted to say yes, but I would have been lying. What I really would have preferred was to not have this conversation at all. However, I knew the look on my mother’s face all too well. Barring paid assassins coming through the door and killing us both, nothing was going to get her out of my office until she’d said what she had come to say.
    “What’s on your mind?” I asked, trying not to think about what was happening in the conference room in my absence.
    “There was an emergency meeting of the Prescott Memorial board this morning. The trustees have voted