Praying for Sleep

I’m talking about the problem with his school. Doesn’t this ring a bell?”
    Portia shook her head and Owen continued, explaining that when Andrew L’Auberget passed away he’d left his entire estate in trust for his wife. When she died the money went to the daughters, with a small bequest going to his alma mater, a private college in Massachusetts.
    “Oh, bless me, for I have sinned,” Portia whispered sarcastically and crossed herself. Their father had often reminisced—reverently and at great length—about his days at Kensington College.
    “The bequest was for a thousand.”
    “So what? Let ’em have it.”
    Owen laughed. “Oh, but they don’t want that. They want the million he was going to leave them originally.”
    “A million ?”
    “About a year before he died,” Lis continued, “the school started admitting women. That was bad enough. But it also adopted a resolution banning gender and sexual-orientation discrimination. You must know all this, Portia.” She turned to her husband. “Didn’t you send her copies of the correspondence?”
    “Please, Lis, a little credit. She’s a beneficiary. She had to be copied.”
    “I probably got it. But, you know, if it’s got a lawyer’s letterhead on it and there’s no check inside, who pays any attention?”
    Lis started to speak but remained silent. Owen continued, “Your father did a codicil to his will, cutting his bequest to the school to a thousand. In protest.”
    “The old shit.”
    “Portia!”
    “When he wrote the chancellor telling him about the change, he said he wasn’t, I’m pretty much quoting, he wasn’t against women and deviates. He was simply for tradition.”
    “I repeat, what a shit.”
    “The school’s challenging the codicil.”
    “What do we do?”
    “Basically, all we have to do is keep an amount equal to their original bequest in the estate account until it’s settled. You don’t have to worry. We’ll win. But we still have to go through the formalities.”
    “Not worry?” Portia blurted. “It’s a million dollars.”
    “Oh, they’ll lose,” Owen announced. “He did execute the codicil during that spell when he was taking Percodan pretty regularly and Lis was spending a lot of time at the house. That’s what the school’s lawyer’s going to argue. Lack of capacity and undue influence by one of the other beneficiaries.”
    “Why do you say they won’t win?”
    Grim-faced, Lis sipped her champagne. “I don’t want to hear this again.”
    Her husband smiled.
    “I’m serious, Owen.”
    He said to his sister-in-law, “The lawyer for the school? I did a little investigating. Turns out he’s been negotiating contracts on behalf of the school with a company his wife’s got a major interest in. Big conflict of interest. And a felony, by the way. I’m going to offer him four or five to settle.”
    Lis said to Portia, “He makes it sound like a legal tactic. To me, it’s blackmail.”
    “Of course it’s blackmail,” Portia said. “So? But you think this lawyer’ll talk the school into settling?”
    “He’ll be . . . persuasive, I’m sure,” Owen said. “Unless he wants an address change to the Bridewell Men’s Colony.”
    “So basically, he’s fucked.” Portia laughed. She held up her glass. “Good job, Attorney.”
    Owen tapped his glass to hers.
    Portia drained her champagne and let Owen pour her more. To her sister she said, “I wouldn’t get on this boy’s bad side, Lis. He might do to you what he does unto others.”
    Owen’s stony façade slipped and he laughed briefly.
    Lis said, “I guess I just feel insulted. I didn’t even know the school was getting any money in the will. I mean, can you imagine Father even talking to me about it? Undue influence? I say let them sue.”
    “Well, I say let our lawyer handle it.” With her working-girl hair rimmed by the black lace headband Portia seemed miraculously transported back to six or seven—the age at which it first was clear that the sisters would be such different people. This process seemed to continue, by inches and miles, Lis sensed, even tonight.
    Owen poured more Moët. “Never would’ve been a problem if your father’d kept his money to himself and his mouth shut. That’s the moral: no good deed goes unpunished.”
    “Your services expensive, Owen?” Portia asked wryly.
    “Never. At least not for beautiful women. It’s in my retainer agreement.”
    Lis stepped between these two people, bound to her