you need anything, Kate. I’ll have all my things out of your room by this evening.”
“Hey, no rush.” She looked around the bedroom, walked up to the sliding doors and gazed at the view beyond. She turned back again, her eyes scrutinizing every detail of the room. The limestone floors, the stone fireplace in the corner, the alcove leading to the cool Italian marble en suite bathroom with a massive walk-in shower and bathtub you could get lost in. “Love the way you’ve kept the room just the same, by the way,” she said.
It was true. Apart from a few paintings we’d hung, and a rug or two, nothing about the house had changed at all. I never had been one for decoration or design, despite my grand ideas for the retreat. The retreat had been a fantasy, I realized now, nothing more. No, this was much better than a retreat. Having a ready-made family. These three had saved me from misery.
“By the way,” I said to Kate, “I’ve been meaning to get extra keys cut for you all but keep forgetting. Remind me next time we go out.”
“You’re our lifesaver, you know that, right?” Kate said, her eyes misting over. “You’re like a mom to us.”
I smiled. In that moment I felt whole. She was so accepting of me, even with my fibs. These three were beginning to feel like my real family.
Sixteen
For the first couple of weeks after the triplets moved in, all went beautifully. They busied themselves at their jobs and I with mine, helping Mr. Donner sort out his estate. Just three days a week, it suited me perfectly. Trusts, mainly, for his children and grandchildren. He was being smart. A lot of people, including lawyers and even CEOs from Fortune 500 companies do not—extraordinarily enough—make a last will and testament. Perhaps it’s an ego problem; because they’re so wealthy they imagine they’re invincible and will escape the inevitable. I had learned, through my profession as a lawyer, that rich and educated people can be dumb. As if their descendants are all going to sit nicely around a table, drinking sherry and discussing amicably how everything should be divided up fairly. And even those who do make airtight wills would roll in their graves if they knew how much discord and fighting goes on after they’ve passed away. The amount of families I had seen ripped apart from inheritance was staggering, and it didn’t even matter how much money was at stake. People morph from being perfectly decent to lifelong enemies, even for the sake of a painting or a set of silverware. It is uncanny the amount of people who measure their late parents’ love, not by memories or what they have done for them during their childhoods, but with material objects, postmortem.
Sad but true. And this is how I had earned a living while I worked at Davis & Trujillo, Juan and his partner’s firm in New York, before we moved here. I had specialized in estates, inheritances, and mergers. It gave me insight into certain traits of human nature—how quickly love can turn to hate—and sometimes back again.
As fast as a hummingbird’s wing.
My new life with Dan, Kate and Jen felt perfect. They were as helpful as ever. Kate now organized all the shopping and continued to drive me back and forth to work. In fact, I realized with shame that I had begun to rely on the triplets with abandon. To the point of wondering how I had ever managed without them.
But by week three of them moving in—sometime at the beginning of December—I became aware of whispers. They mingled with the winter mist, stole into the cries of barking seals, blended with the crashing surf.
Was I imagining things?
I was no longer drinking. Okay, that’s a fib. I was drinking, just not so much. And although the triplets’ presence replaced the hollow misery I felt after Juan’s death, I still pined for him and had trouble getting to sleep. A good night’s sleep was as hard to catch as the edge of a cloud. Sometimes I could snag it and ride its wave as I nodded off. Other times—most of the time, lately—it was like jump-starting a car. Just as I was swaying into bliss I’d get jerked by some outside force, like falling off a cliff. I’d often find myself sitting bolt upright in bed, awake and covered in sweat, going over and over what happened to him, and the part