Rose is ushered into the office. Lush carpet, bookcases heavy and dark, leather chairs with high backs: little has changed. The woman doing the greeting and ushering, Rose realizes, is Alma, the old paralegal. The furnishings might have stayed the same, but Alma is changed. She looks younger than Rose remembers. Her hair is a different color and worn in a fashionable cut. She’s lost weight. Where Rose remembers a bit of an aging drudge, there stands a polished, vibrant professional.

“Alma?” Rose says.

“Alma,” the woman agrees with a smile. “When I met you I was finishing up law school. I was promoted to junior partner. When my mentor—and friend—passed away several years ago…” She shrugs and smiles as she gestures at the room. “I left the manly décor because it reminds me of him. And it seems to comfort people.” Alma raises her eyebrows. “We have tea, if you prefer.”

Tea sounds good, civilized. “I would like some tea,” Rose says.

Alma leaves to fetch refreshments. Rose studies her surroundings. The furniture mimics antiques but is probably no more than twenty years old. Boilerplate, as if the importance of male professionalism has been captured by a franchise designer, and sold as Big Deal Lawyer in a Box. As one would expect, gigantic framed diplomas and certificates cover the wall behind the desk. Alma Mae Greene, magna cum laude, Tulane University. Much in the way of olde-fashioned script and gold foil. In lesser frames, on a lesser wall, are the memorabilia of the firm’s founder.

Rose remembers him, a slight man with thinning white hair. There was a genuine kindness about him that settled the inevitable queasiness stirred up by deciding who would benefit from one’s demise. Rose notes he also graduated from Tulane, sixty years to the day before his protégée.

“Choices,” Alma says, returning with a tray bearing an honest-to-England tea set complete with matching sugar and cream servers.

“Perfect,” Rose says. She chooses Lady Grey. Alma pours steaming water over the bag. Not quite in keeping with the classics, but close enough.

They settle down to the arduous business of rewriting the will. Alma, the professional woman Rose hadn’t seen when she was the firm’s paralegal, doesn’t ask Rose why she is cutting Harley’s sons out of the will less than three months after their father died. Undoubtedly stepparents do that sort of thing all the time, which is probably why someone in Harley’s family wants Rose too crazy, then too dead, to make the aforementioned changes.