“I didn’t. I just had some odds and ends. That’s one of them. I wondered about something else. I don’t mean to pry. But remember, I’m sort of an unofficial uncle. Did your mother leave you enough to get along on?”
She rolled her eyes. “Enough! Heavens. When she knew she needed the first operation, back before Maurie became so sick with that miscarriage, she told each of us how she had set things up and asked us if we wanted anything changed while she still had time. Some enormously clever man handled her finances after Daddy died, and made her a lot of money. There are two trust accounts, one for me and one for Maurie. After estate taxes and legal costs and probate costs and all that, there’ll be some fantastic amount in trust for each of us, close to seven hundred thousand dollars! So as soon as it’s settled and the Casey Key house is sold and all, we’ll start getting some idiotic amount like forty thousand a year each. I had no idea! It’s tied up in trust until each of us reach forty-five, or until our oldest child gets to be twenty-one. If we have no children, then of course we just have access to the whole amount when we’re forty-five. But if we do, then each child gets a hundred-thousand-dollar trust fund when it gets to be twenty-one, and because, by the time you’re forty-five, you certainly know there aren’t going to be any more kids, the same amount is sequestered-is that the word?-for your kids, like if you have five all under twenty-one, then a hundred thousand would be set aside for each one for their trust funds, and you would get what’s left over.”
“What happens if either of you die?”
“All the money would be left in trust for the kids, if I was married and had any. And if not, the trust would just sort of end and Maurie would get the amount that’s in trust. God, Travis, it is such a horrid feeling thinking these past weeks what would happen if Maurie did manage to kill herself. Hundreds of thousands of dollars directly to me, and all that income from the trust. It’s spooky, because I never knew and I never thought of myself that way. I knew there would be some, of course. But past a certain point it just gets ridiculous.” She turned from the painting, brush in hand, and smiled at me. “Dear Uncle, you do not have to worry about my finances.” Her face saddened abruptly. “Mother just didn’t have much of a life, the last six years of it. After we got back to the Key, after my father died, we’d take long walks on the beach, the three of us, every morning. She talked to us. She made us understand that Mick Pearson just could not have ever accepted a neat, tidy, orderly, well-regulated little life. He had to bet it all, every time. And I remember that she said to us that if she’d only had five years of him, or ten, or fifteen instead of twenty-one, she would still have settled for that much life with him instead of forty years with any other man she’d ever met. She said that was what marriage was all about and she hoped we’d both find something just half as perfect.”
“Did she have her first operation here?”
“Yes. You see, Maurie was almost five months pregnant and she’d lost the first baby at six months. It was an absolutely stupid accident the first tune. She drove down to pick up a cake she’d ordered for Tom’s birthday and it was in July two years ago, and she was driving back in a heavy rain and she started to put on the brakes and the cake started to slide off the seat, and she grabbed for it and when she did, she stomped harder on the brake and the car slid and she went up over the curb and hit a palm tree, and the steering wheel hit her in the stomach, and about three hours later, in the hospital, she aborted and the baby was alive, actually, a preemie, but less than two pounds, and she just didn’t make it. It was very sad and all, but Maurie told me on long distance there was no point in my coming down. She recovered very quickly. So I guess mother thought she’d better come over and keep Maurie from running into any palm trees so she would have her first grandchild. After she was here a week or so, she noticed some bleeding and had a checkup and they decided they’d better operate. She had Doctor William Dyckes, and he is fabulously good. When we knew she was going to be operated on, I came down to be with her and do what I could. Then, three days after she was operated on, Maurie went into some kind of kidney failure and had convulsions and lost her second baby, and hasn’t been right since. While they were both in there, I flew up and packed and closed my apartment and put stuff in storage and had the rest shipped down.”