Genuine Lies

whiskey. His gasp of disbelief was accented by the tinkle of ice cubes as they dropped from his glass onto the glossy surface of the bar.
    While those in the room watched with varying degrees of interest or disgust, he flew into a rage that traveled the spectrum from swearing, to whining, to babbling and back to swearing.
    “Goddamn bitch.” He nearly choked on the air he dragged into his lungs. His face was the unhealthy color of an eraser faded by sunlight. “I gave her years, nearly twenty fucking years of my life. I won’t be cut off this way. Not after everything I did for her.”
    “Did for her?” Maggie gave a hoarse laugh. “You never did anything for Eve except lighten her bank account.”
    He took a step forward, nearly drunk enough to consider hitting a woman in front of witnesses. “All you ever did was leech your fifteen percent. I was family. If you think you’re going to walk out of here with emeralds or anything else while I get nothing—”
    “Mr. Morrison,” the attorney interrupted. “You are, of course, free to contest the will—”
    “Fucking-a right.”
    “However,” he continued with unruffled dignity. “I should tell you that Miss Benedict discussed her wishes with me quite specifically. I also have a copy of a videotape shemade, less conventionally stating those wishes. You will find contesting this document very expensive, and less than fruitful. If you wish to do so, you’ll still have to wait until I finish with today’s procedure. To continue …”
    There was a bequest for Victor that included her collection of poetry and a small paperweight described as a glass dome enclosing a red sleigh and eight reindeer.
    “To Brandon Summers, whom I find charming, I leave the sum of one million dollars for his education and entertainment to be set in trust until his twenty-fifth birthday, when he will be free to do whatever appeals to him with whatever sum remains.”
    “That’s fucking ludicrous,” Drake began. “She leaves a million, a goddamn million to some kid? Some snotty brat kid who might as well have come off the street.”
    Before Julia could speak, Paul had risen. The look on his face had her blood going cold. She wondered how anyone could survive being on the receiving end of that ice-edged glance.
    Threats were expected. A quick, nasty fistfight wouldn’t have surprised. Hell, it would have been enjoyed. Even Gloria had stopped whimpering to watch. But Paul, his eyes flat and hard and level, spoke only one sentence.
    “Don’t open your mouth again.”
    He said it quietly, but no one could have missed the barbed and ready edge beneath the words. When he took his seat again, Greenburg merely nodded, as if Paul had given the correct answer to a particularly thorny question.
    “The rest,” he read, “including all real and personal property, all assets, all stocks, bonds, revenue, I leave to Paul Winthrop and Julia Summers, to be shared between them in whatever manner they see fit.”
    Julia heard nothing else. The lawyer’s droning voice couldn’t penetrate the buzzing in her ears. She could see his mouth move, see his dark, sharp eyes on her face. There was a tingling in her arm, as if it had fallen asleep and the blood was fighting its way back into circulation with its littlepinpricks of annoyance. But it was only Paul’s hand as he gripped her.
    She rose to her feet without being aware. Blindly, her feet reaching for the floor like a drunkard’s, she stumbled out of the room and onto the terrace.
    There was life there, the vibrant hues from the flowers, the insistently cheerful call of birds. And air. She could pull it into her lungs, feel it stream in, then out again as if it, too, had color and texture and sound. She drew more in, greedily, then felt the stab of pain slice through her stomach.
    “Take it easy.” Paul’s hands were on her shoulders, his voice low and soft in her ear.
    “I can’t.” The voice she heard sounded much too thin, much too wobbly to be hers. “How can I? It isn’t right that she should have given me anything.”
    “She thought it was right.”
    “You don’t know the things I said to her, how I treated her that last night. And beyond—for God’s sake, Paul, she owed me nothing.”
    He caught her chin, forced her to look at him. “I think you’re more afraid of what you feel you owe her.”
    “Mr. Winthrop. Excuse me.” Greenburg nodded at both of them. “I realize this is a difficult day for you, for all