“And I’ll fight you back,” Gwen said with far more confidence than she felt. The house was titled in her name, but the laws of marital property were a bit of a mystery. Would a sympathetic judge side with Vivian because of the child? She didn’t know, and the prospect of a lawsuit frightened her. She continued twisting a wire around the limb of the bonsai tree, gently bending it into place as she pondered the problem.

“So typical,” Vivian sneered. “You can’t even let that poor tree grow naturally. You clip and groom and twist it into shape, just like you tried to do with Jasper.”

Gwen would not sink to Vivian’s level. “You can throw as many barbs as you like, but you’re not getting this house.”

“I’ll get a lawyer,” Vivian threatened. “As a good mother, I will fight for the rights of Jasper’s child. This house will go to Mimi if it’s the last thing I do.”

The door slammed behind Vivian when she left, and Gwen dropped the pruning shears, her fingers shaking too hard to keep working.

Vivian was wrong about one thing. Gwen never could force Jasper to her will. After she learned about his affair, she’d desperately sought to please him. She quit spending so much time in the garden and tried to improve her appearance. She got manicures to soften her hands. Instead of wearing her hair in its normal braid over her shoulder, she bought heating tongs to style it in spiraling waves down her back, just as Vivian wore hers. Instead of her loosely flowing gowns, she bought tight corsets and tailored clothes—again, like Vivian wore.

Nothing worked. In hindsight, it was humiliating how hard she’d tried to win her husband’s affection, but Gwen would never surrender to his mistress again.

The problem was that Vivian had the will in her possession, and Gwen couldn’t remember exactly what it said. She should have hired a lawyer from the beginning. It would have been humiliating, but she wouldn’t be in this position if she had a lawyer from the outset.

The harsh clang of the telephone broke the silence of the evening.

The telephone was the only thing she disliked about this house. It was like an invader in her home, making her jump at all hours. She sighed and walked to the dim hallway outside the kitchen where the telephone was mounted on the wall. Gwen had tried to liven up the hallway by adding a line of glass tiles from the Tiffany studio at shoulder height. She’d hoped the whimsical tiles in iridescent gold and emerald would be a cheerful sight while dealing with the annoying intrusion of telephone calls.

She lifted the earpiece and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Hello?”

“Is that you, Mrs. K?”