He would arrive perfectly dressed, pat his father’s arm in the distracted way of someone who is not quite present, and ask whether Arthur had mentioned the will recently.
Vanessa told herself it was grief expressing itself in an uncomfortable way.
She was wrong about that, as she would later understand.
When Arthur died, Vanessa lost someone who had quietly and genuinely become the father she had always wanted.
Curtis, standing beside her at the moment of Arthur’s passing, looked something close to relieved.
The Afternoon the Suitcases Appeared
At Arthur’s funeral, Curtis performed grief with considerable polish.
He had a silk handkerchief and a controlled tremble in his voice and said all the right things to all the right people.
But his eyes moved constantly around the room, cataloging the businessmen in attendance, assessing their suits and their watches with the quiet calculations of a man who was already thinking about what came next.
Two days after the funeral, Vanessa came home from handling cemetery paperwork to find her suitcases in the foyer.
They had not been packed with any care.
They had been thrown together — clothes half-folded, shoes jammed in sideways, belongings treated with the casual disregard of someone disposing of things that no longer had value.
Curtis descended the staircase as she stood staring at her own luggage.
He was dressed well. He had a champagne glass in his hand. He carried himself with the ease of a man who had already moved on from a situation he had long considered resolved.
He told her, pleasantly and without apology, that it was time for them to go their separate ways.
Vanessa stood very still while he explained his reasoning.
His father was gone. The inheritance was now his. Seventy-five million dollars represented a significant change in his circumstances and his expectations for his life going forward.
She did not fit the image he intended to project.
She had been useful, he said, when his father needed someone to handle the caregiving. A convenient arrangement. But that chapter was closed now.
He pulled a check from his shirt pocket and dropped it at her feet.
Ten thousand dollars.
Payment for services rendered, he said.
He wanted her gone before his attorney arrived.
Security walked Vanessa out of the house in the rain.
She stood on the pavement with her poorly packed suitcases and watched the front door close behind her.
Curtis watched from the balcony above with his champagne glass, looking entirely comfortable with what he had just done.
That night, Vanessa slept in her car in a grocery store parking lot.
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