Three at the Table

Chapter 1: The Driveway

Anne Wolcott stood at the kitchen window and watched the headlights turn into the driveway. The first car was Christine's—a silver Lexus that caught the porch light as it swung into its usual spot beside the garage. Christine always parked there, even though it was Anne's house, as if proximity to the garage door signified something about rank or belonging. The second set of headlights didn't appear for another eleven minutes. Anne counted them on the clock above the stove, the one shaped like a rooster that their mother had bought at a craft fair in 1994 and that Anne had never been able to throw away.

The kitchen smelled like coffee. Anne had made a full pot, though she knew none of them should be drinking caffeine at nine-thirty on a Wednesday night. Tomorrow was the deposition. Tomorrow they would sit in separate rooms in the offices of Plunkett, Healey & Strand and answer questions under oath about their father's medical practice, about billing, about patient outcomes, about what they knew and when they knew it. Anne had been preparing for weeks—reviewing her own records, meeting with the family's attorney, rehearsing answers that were truthful without being expansive. She was good at that. She had always been good at that.

Christine came through the side door without knocking. She was fifty-one, three years younger than Anne, and she carried herself with the particular authority of a woman who spent her days managing seven hundred adolescents and forty-three teachers. Her coat was camel-colored and expensive. Her hair was cut in a sharp bob that Anne privately thought was too severe for her face but that Christine wore like armor.

"Is she here yet?" Christine asked.

"Not yet."

"Of course not." Christine set her purse on the counter and surveyed the kitchen with the evaluative gaze she brought to everything. "You made coffee."

"I made coffee."

"We should be sleeping."

"We should be doing a lot of things."

Christine pulled out a chair and sat down at the table—the big oak table where their father had eaten breakfast every morning for thirty-one years, where he'd read the newspaper and circled articles about medical malpractice reform with a red pen, where he'd carved the Thanksgiving turkey and quizzed them on state capitals and told them, repeatedly, that the Wolcott name meant something in this town. The table had come to Anne after his death, along with the house, along with everything else that mattered. Rebecca had gotten a set of golf clubs and a savings bond that had matured to eleven hundred dollars.

"Did you eat?" Anne asked.

"I'm not hungry."

"I have soup."

"Anne. I'm not hungry."

Anne poured two cups of coffee and brought them to the table. She sat across from her sister and wrapped her hands around the mug. Her fingers were cold. They'd been cold all day, even though it was September and the house was warm. She'd turned the heat up to seventy-two, which was extravagant, which was the kind of thing their father would have noticed and commented on. Edward Wolcott had kept the thermostat at sixty-seven year-round. He'd called it discipline. Their mother had called it cheap, but only when he wasn't in the room.

"Have you talked to Lyle?" Christine asked. Lyle Plunkett was the attorney—had been the family's attorney for twenty years, had handled the estate, had been the one to call each of them when the wrongful death suit was filed seven months ago.

"This afternoon. He went over the questions again."

"And?"

"And he says the same thing he's been saying. Answer what's asked. Don't volunteer. Don't speculate."

"That's easy for him to say. He bills by the hour regardless."

Anne almost smiled. "He also said the plaintiff's attorney is good. Young, but good. She's been filing discovery motions like she's getting paid per page."

"What's her name again?"

"Trotter. Samantha Trotter."

"And the plaintiff?"

"The family of Gerald Henning. He was seventy-three. Dad performed a spinal fusion in 2019. Henning developed an infection post-op, went septic, died six weeks later."

Christine stared into her coffee. "Was the surgery necessary?"

"Lyle says that's what they're trying to establish. The plaintiff's expert says no. Our expert says it was within the standard of care."

"But what do you think?"

Anne looked at her sister. Christine's eyes were steady, but her jaw was tight. This was the question that had been hovering between them for months, the question neither of them had been willing to ask directly. What did Anne think? Anne, who had managed the books. Anne, who had processed the billing. Anne, who had sat in the office every Tuesday and Thursday for fifteen years, inputting codes and reconciling accounts and filing insurance claims for procedures she couldn't pronounce but could price to the penny.

"I think," Anne said carefully, "that Dad was a surgeon, and surgeons operate. That's what they do."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer I have tonight."

Outside, a car door slammed. They both turned toward the window. Through the curtain, Anne could see Rebecca crossing the lawn—not the driveway, the lawn, cutting across the grass in that careless way she'd always had, as if paths were suggestions meant for other people. She was carrying something. A box. Cardboard, about the size of a case of wine, clutched against her chest with both arms.

Anne felt something shift in her stomach. Not nausea exactly, but a premonition of it—the body's early warning system, older and more honest than the mind.

"What's she carrying?" Christine asked.

"I don't know."

The side door opened. Rebecca came in with the September air clinging to her jacket and her cheeks flushed from the walk across the yard. She was forty-six, the baby, though nobody had called her that in decades. She was thinner than the last time Anne had seen her, which had been at their father's memorial service fourteen months ago. Her hair was longer, pulled back in a loose ponytail that made her look younger than she was, or maybe just more tired.

"Sorry I'm late," Rebecca said. She didn't sound sorry. She set the box on the table between the two coffee cups with a deliberateness that made Anne's premonition sharpen into something closer to dread.

"What is that?" Christine asked.

"That," Rebecca said, pulling out a chair and sitting down, "is why I asked to come tonight."

"You said you wanted to go over the deposition."

"I lied." Rebecca looked at each of them in turn. Her eyes were their father's eyes—pale blue, direct, capable of a coldness that could make you feel like a stranger in your own family. "I need to show you something. Both of you. Before tomorrow."

Anne stared at the box. It was an ordinary box, the kind you'd get from a moving company or a storage supply store. The flaps were folded shut but not taped. There was nothing written on the outside. It looked like it could contain anything—old photographs, Christmas ornaments, tax returns. But the way Rebecca held herself, the way she'd placed it on the table like evidence being entered into a record, told Anne that whatever was inside would not be ordinary at all.

"Before you open that," Anne said, "I want to know where it came from."

Rebecca met her gaze. "A storage unit. On Route 9, out past the Crestwood Mall. Unit 247 at Patriot Self-Storage. Rented under the name Edward Walsh."

"Edward Walsh," Christine repeated.

"Edward. Walsh. Dad's first name and Mom's maiden name. He wasn't exactly creative."

Anne's hands tightened around her coffee mug. "Dad didn't have a storage unit."

"Dad had a lot of things we didn't know about," Rebecca said. "That's the point."

She reached forward and opened the flaps of the box.