Doesn’t it upset you that we’re getting pressured less than a week after Dad died?”

“Not really,” Tricia responded. “It would upset me more if they weren’t circling, because that would mean the market is collapsing. Right, Cap?”

The two lawyers communicated on a different level. To Liza and Maggie, Cap would always be a benevolent uncle; to Tricia, he was a colleague and mentor.

“I had several people make offers at the wake. All cash. Good numbers,”

Cap responded, selecting a blueberry scone and setting it down next to his coffee. “I don’t think they’ll remember making the offers, but I think a couple of them could actually afford the place. I should have had them sign something.”

Tricia and Maggie laughed out loud and Liza tried hard not to smile imagining the offers Cap had fielded. She wanted to remain slightly put out by the thought of selling her childhood home to some drunken bidder.

(They’d only gotten rid of the last of the mourners a few hours ago, finding a couple of fishermen asleep on the leather couches in the library.) The property alone at Willow Lane was worth several million dollars. Cap hoped that once he had delivered all the news—the good and the not good

—the sisters would agree that now was not the time to be sentimental. This property had the potential to be their asset and they would have to maximize its value. He hoped they were ready to hear that. “Should we go through the documents now? This may take a while.”

The three sisters let the news settle in and then Tricia spoke. She had been taking notes on a yellow pad the entire time as Cap took them through the will and then the financials. She had filled up several pages, but it really all boiled down to a few questions. “So, there’s very little cash, the house is overleveraged, and the manuscript for the memoir Dad owes his publisher is somewhere, but we don’t know where. Is that all correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Well, at least Dad had the sense to name you his literary executor and not the bartender at the Shoe. You have a broad understanding about the options for all his intellectual property. I’m curious about the royalty income. I never knew the exact figure, but Dad had mentioned to me several times that it was solid. He said if high school teachers and college professors kept assigning his books, we’d be set for life. What’s happened to that money?”

“There is some, but I think your father may have been exaggerating when he said that you were set for life. It’s in the low six figures annually, very low six figures. After Lois takes her commission, you all would split less than a hundred thousand annually.”

“That’s a surprise. How did it happen? I mean, I know you weren’t his keeper and it’s not your fault, but how did he blow through a half-million-dollar book advance and why so many refinances on the house? And, please don’t say he bought a lot of rounds at the bar. That’s what he used to say to our mother when money was tight and we all knew it was a lie back then.”

“Your father was generous with money. He bailed out his sister Frannie after her divorce and paid for Sean’s education. He invested in some get-rich-quick schemes that didn’t get him rich quick and made some loans to friends that were never paid back. He loaned one gentleman the money to buy a commercial fishing boat and the guy died the next year. Bill didn’t have the heart to collect on the loan from his widow. But he also had a reckless streak, as you know. Some of it was gambling. It was an issue for him and he thought he’d put that behind him. But betting on sports sucked him in again. College basketball, football. I think he even placed bets on the America’s Cup. He didn’t tell me much about it, but he had some big losses in the last few years that ate up the advance.”

“Did he use a bookie? Or go to Atlantic City?” Tricia knew enough about gambling laws to know that neither Connecticut nor New York allowed sportsbooks, but New Jersey did.

“Atlantic City. Never a bookie. He didn’t want to get back into that again.

But he thought he could handle a couple of trips a year to Atlantic City.”

“That depresses me more than the losses, thinking of him spending a weekend in Atlantic City alone.” Tricia didn’t want to let her mind wander to whether he may not have been alone, but she did ask Cap, “Were there, are there, women he’s giving money to?”

“No. He would have told me that.”

“And the manuscript. You said . . .” Tricia looked down at her notes to read directly, “. . . ‘it’s completed but its whereabouts are unknown.’ And that Dad has hidden it somewhere because he wanted to, quote, ‘add a coda or do some updating and then have it published after his death,’ but you don’t think he got to the coda. Is that correct?”

Cap was patient, responding to Tricia carefully, “That is correct, although I wouldn’t say that the manuscript is hidden. I’m sure it’s in his office. Your father said he wasn’t ready to turn it in yet and preferred that it be published after his death.”

“Why? He usually loved the hoopla.”

“He told me that in this book, he really let it all hang out. That was the phrase he used—‘let it all hang out.’ And that he felt too old to answer for his sins on some NPR interview show to publicize the book. He only wanted it published after his death.”

“That’s morbid, coming from him. He seemed to think he’d never die.

What’s in it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read it. I don’t think anyone has. But the publisher is eager for it. At least they were last week when you father was simply fending them off with calls for more time. Now that he’s gone, I’m sure now they want it even more.”

“Is that why you told us to keep the boathouse locked the night of the wake?” Tricia asked, a whole new light of comprehension dawning. This was a big deal, an unforeseen issue that could damage not only the estate, but the legacy of William Sweeney. A posthumous memoir of radical honesty was valuable and potentially explosive. Jesus, Dad. “You didn’t want those people from the publishing house poking around in there, did you?”

“I didn’t. Or anyone from Lois Hopper’s office. She may be his agent, but I don’t think she’s his advocate. We need to do this on our terms and our timeline. If you’ll allow me to assist you in dealing with all these issues.”

“Of course, Cap.”

After Tricia’s rapid-fire questions, Liza asked quietly, “Cap, did he know he was sick? This seems pretty calculated. Hiding the book until his death.”

“I think he knew something. He’d made a few references lately about his heart, made a few changes to his habits.” Cap was vague with the sisters.

He was fairly sure that Bill Sweeney knew there were heart issues and had seen him visibly slow down in the past few months. But the girls hadn’t signed off on an autopsy, so no one would ever know for sure.

Maggie finally spoke. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I thought selling the house would bring in millions. Do you mean we’ll get nothing?”

The thought had crossed both Liza’s and Tricia’s mind, but only Maggie was desperate enough to say it out loud. Maggie was counting on a windfall, needed a windfall, to stabilize her life. She didn’t have a husband like Liza or a regular paycheck like Tricia. She lived a life that had been piecemealed together, funded by intermittent periods of good fortune (rich boyfriends, generous friends, occasional patrons of the arts) and periods of barely scraping by where she’d relied on the kindness of her sisters and total strangers, like the Arts Commission of Mill River, who were funding her current living situation. Even her car was a gift from her father, something a thirty-four-year-old woman should be able to buy herself. Or at the very least, lease. But when Maggie arrived home last year, Bill Sweeney took one look at her and said, “I’ll buy you a car. What do you want?” He was a fan of the big gesture.

Maggie was hoping an inheritance might get her a tiny place on Martha’s Vineyard or Key West, even Austin, if that’s all she could afford. This was not the news she was expecting. She was torn between cursing and crying.

“How is that possible?”

Tricia stepped in, like she usually did when Maggie was going over a cliff. “Listen, we’ll find the manuscript and get out from under that possible litigation and financial obligation. If the advance is gone, we have to deliver that manuscript or pay back the money somehow, like using the proceeds from the house sale. Once we deliver it, we’re in the clear financially, right, Cap?” He nodded. “Is this house underwater?” Cap shook his head. It wasn’t. There was a lot of debt, to be sure, but they should be able to squeeze some money out of it if they got a good price.

Tricia got it. “Then we sell the house as is and we don’t get greedy. Look around. This place is a tear-down. Some captain of finance wants this