We’ll come back here. We’ll all be together. Cynthia, I said, she stopped. What you’re describing, I said, is an arrangement in which I surrender legal ownership of something that is mine in exchange for access to a portion of it administered by the people who tried to take it from me. You’re asking me to trust a trust managed by people who have demonstrated quite clearly that they cannot be trusted. I kept my voice even.
That is not a reconciliation offer. That is the same theft presented more gently. The softness left Cynthia’s face like a light going out. You’re being very stubborn, she said. I prefer consistent, I said. Derek stood up. The performance was over. You’re doing this out of spite, he said.
And his voice had that cold edge again, the one that had frightened me in the bedroom. You want to punish us? Fine. But when this goes to court, and it will, everything comes out. Your finances, your competency, or my competency, I repeated. You’re 74 years old and you’re making irrational decisions.