Would You Like a Rose

Chapter 06 - The Attorney's File

James Ellery had been the Rosewood-Harland family's attorney for sixteen years, which meant he'd been employed by this family for precisely the five years before Nicholas Harland began making payments to a Pittsburgh attorney, and for the eleven years after.

He told Victoria this sitting across from her at his desk in his Midtown office, with the specific discomfort of a man who had been asked a direct question and possessed both the professional obligation and the personal inclination to answer it honestly.

"I didn't know about the payments Nicholas was making," James said. "I want to be absolutely clear about that. The legal complications surrounding Clara Alcott's adoption record were things I understood to be inherited from the original arrangements made by your mother and grandmother. It was only when I began pulling the actual records yesterday that I found evidence of more recent interventions."

He placed a folder on the desk between them, turned to face her.

"The most recent legal barrier to Clara accessing the sealed adoption records was filed two years ago," he said. "It was filed by a firm Nicholas Harland uses for separate business matters. I have no evidence he instructed this, but I also have no evidence he didn't."

Victoria looked at the folder without touching it. "Two years ago," she said. "That's when her husband died."

James's expression confirmed that he'd made the same calculation. "The timing would suggest that the filing was made in response to increased search activity around that period. Clara Alcott apparently escalated her research considerably after her husband's death."

"Because he'd been encouraging her," Victoria said. "And when he died, she decided to stop being careful about it."

"That would be consistent with the timeline," James agreed.

Victoria sat with the full, assembled picture of it, the specific, architectural patience required to maintain this kind of interference over eleven years, the monitoring that would have been necessary, the ongoing legal work required to keep a set of sealed records sealed against a determined person's best efforts to unseal them.

"James," she said. "I need to know what the actual legal situation is with the Rosewood estate. Not the narrative I've been given. The actual legal situation, if Clara's existence and her mother's existence were to be formally established."

James folded his hands. "That's a considerably more complex question than it might appear."

"I know," Victoria said. "I'm asking it anyway."

He walked her through it methodically, the way he delivered all legally complex information, in sequence rather than in summary, because summaries created false simplicity and false simplicity created disasters.

The Rosewood estate had passed from Catherine Rosewood to Eleanor Rosewood under the assumption that Eleanor was Catherine's only surviving heir. If Margaret Rosewood, Eleanor's twin, had survived and produced children, and if the original adoption arrangement for those children had been made in violation of proper inheritance law, the estate's succession could be challenged.

"The challenge would depend on when the adoption arrangement was made, whether proper consent was obtained, and whether the financial transfers made in connection with the arrangement constitute a fraudulent suppression of inheritance rights," James said. "Clara Alcott would need legal representation with specific expertise in contested estate matters."

"She'll have it," Victoria said.

James looked at her with the specific expression he used when he needed to confirm that he'd heard correctly. "You intend to pay for your sister's legal challenge to your own inheritance."

"I intend to make sure my sister has access to every legal right that belongs to her," Victoria said. "Which may or may not affect the inheritance itself once an accurate legal picture is established. I'd like you to work with whatever attorney Clara chooses to represent her, and I'd like you to ensure that she has access to every document held in the family's archive that's relevant to her case."

"Victoria," James said carefully. "This could cost you—"

"James," she said. "Are you my attorney, or Nicholas's attorney."