“Not yet. She told Vanessa she wanted to read it first.”
“Good,” I said. “Don’t sign it. Either of you. Please.”
“What’s happening?” Deb said. “I mean — I saw the page numbers too. Last night. I didn’t say anything because–” She trailed off.
“Because it wasn’t your fight,” I said.
“I didn’t think it was my place.”
“I understand,” I said, and I did. Deb was not going to charge into anything. But she’d called me, which meant she’d thought about it, which meant the page numbers had registered.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I’m going to contact Dad’s attorney,” I said. “The one who drafted the will.”
There was a pause. “Does Vanessa know you know her name?”
“She knows now,” I said.
## Mara Chen
Mara Chen’s office was in a professional building downtown, the kind of place that had a reception desk and a coffee machine in the waiting area and felt like someone had made careful decisions about the carpet. I had emailed her the previous evening, identified myself as Martin Ellis’s daughter, explained that I believed I was a named beneficiary in his will and had not had access to the complete document. She’d called me back by nine the next morning.
We met in person because I was still in the city and because some conversations are better in person.
She was a compact woman in her mid-forties, careful in the way that people who do precision work become careful. She offered condolences without over-explaining them. Then she asked me what I needed to know.