The Inheritors by Harold Robbins

brave,” Mr. Blake, the attorney, said to me as I sat dry-eyed in his office after the funeral. “It was quick and merciful. They never even knew what happened.”
    I glanced over at my Aunt Prudence who sat in front of the desk on the opposite corner. She was nothing like her name. A long time ago she had moved from New Bedford to Cape Ann. My father rarely spoke about his younger sister, but I had heard all the stories.
    About how she had fallen in love with an artist and had followed him to Paris only to be deserted by him when he went back to his wife. Then other affairs, each whispered about, until one day she returned to New Bedford.
    My father didn’t know she was in town until she came into his office at the bank. She had a little five-year-old boy with her. He clung to her skirts nervously.
    “Hello, John,” she said.
    “Prudence,” my father said stiffly.
    She looked down at the little boy. “
Dit bon jour au monsieur
,
Pierre
,” she said.
    “
Bon jour
,” the little boy said shyly.
    “He speaks only French,” Aunt Prudence said.
    “Who is he?” my father asked, staring at him.
    “He’s my son,” she said. “I adopted him.”
    “Do you expect me to believe that?” my father asked.
    “I don’t give a damn what you believe,” she said. “I only came for my money.”
    My father knew what she was talking about. But there was still that New England streak in him. Women were not to be trusted, even with their own inheritance. “The money is supposed to remain with the bank until you are thirty years old, according to the terms of Father’s will.”
    “I was thirty last month,” she said.
    He finally looked from the boy to her. “So you are,” he said, a note of surprise in his voice. “So you are.”
    He picked up the telephone and asked for the trust-account records. “Times have been difficult,” he said. “But I have managed to keep your estate intact, even increase it a little despite the fact you kept taking out all the earnings as fast as they accrued.”
    “That was the one thing I was sure you would do, John.”
    He began to feel slightly more confident with her. “The wise thing to do would be to leave it here. The earnings come to about thirty-five hundred a year. You could live very nicely on that.”
    “I suppose I could,” she said. “But I have no intention of doing that.”
    “What are you going to do with the money?”
    “I’ve already done it,” she said. “I’ve bought a small inn on Cape Ann. I’ve got it all figured out. The inn runs itself and I can continue painting. Pierre and I can have a very nice life there.”
    My father tried to talk her out of it. She shut him up.
    “I want to make a home for Pierre,” she said. “Do you think I can do that here?”
    Aunt Prudence went to Cape Ann. A few years later we heard from a mutual friend who had seen her that the little boy had died.
    “It’s just as well,” my father nodded. “He didn’t look very strong to me. Anyway he spoke nothing but French.”
    “Was he my cousin?” I asked. I was about six years old at the time.
    “No,” my father said sharply.
    “But if he was Auntie Prue’s little boy—”
    “He wasn’t her little boy,” my father snapped. “She just adopted him because he had no home and no parents. Your Aunt Prue felt sorry for him, that’s all.”
    That conversation must have made more of an impression on me than I had realized. I remembered it as I sat looking at her at the other end of Mr. Blake’s desk. Now it was my turn. I wondered if she was sorry for me.
    “Stephen.” I turned from her to Mr. Blake.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You’re no longer a child, but you’re not yet a man, legally that is,” he said. “But I think you should have something to say about yourself. Your father was not a rich man; he left you well provided for. There’s enough money left to see you through school and college, even get you started in a profession should you choose. But there is