“Let’s not talk about this, okay? You want to hire an attorney, you can go right ahead. I told you to do that the first time we spoke. You have a copy of the will. You have the hearing date, and you can do anything you like.”

He turned without another word and moved around the back of his car to the driver’s seat. He got in and slammed the door.

It took him two tries to get his car started, but then he peeled out with a chirp.

Anna was right. The guy was a drama queen.

I unlocked the Mustang, tossed my duffel into the backseat and my shoulder bag in the front. I got in, started the car, and pulled out of the slot. Such was the thrilling climax of my twenty-four-hour sojourn in Bakersfield.

By 10:52, I was driving west on California Street toward the southbound on-ramp to State Route 99. There were two more delays coming up but I didn’t know that yet, so I was excited about getting home. Bakersfield had been a bust. In the main, I’d accomplished my goals, but in doing so, I’d stirred up a nest of hornets. Two of Dace’s three kids were hopeless. I couldn’t convince them their father had been dealt a bad hand. As far as Ethan and Anna were concerned, his leaving me the money had only fanned the resentment they’d carried for years. How else could it have turned out? Of course they were angry. Of course they responded with more of the same.

There were other elements in play. It would be disingenuous to claim I was above caring about $595,350. I’d never been close to that much money in my life, and while it wasn’t really mine, it was certainly a subject worthy of consideration. Briefly, I fantasized about what would happen if I disregarded the terms of the will and divided the inheritance equally among the three. How far might that go toward healing the rift? Nowhere. Ethan and Anna would blow their portion and then expect Ellen to fork over hers until that was gone as well. Ellen would agree because she felt guilty about the two of them, an attitude they’d fostered in her over the years.

I toyed with the idea of handing over part of the money—say, $100,000 divided three ways instead of the half a million plus. The flaw there was that if I thought they were entitled to a little bit of money, why not the whole amount? Either it was all right or all wrong. Acting in opposition to Dace’s wishes was clearly wrong, regardless of Ethan’s threats or Evelyn’s maneuvering. Money aside, from their point of view the crux of the problem was Dace’s love affair with hooch and his refusal to give it up. In his children’s eyes, he’d died preferring alcohol to them.