He’d skipped breakfast rather than deal with Shirley’s lackluster demeanor and her disinterest in anyone and everything around her. He had tried to reason with her and to make her understand that her misery sprang from her own unwillingness to accept the truth and to acknowledge that Carson had behaved fairly and honorably with respect to that will. “It’s time I put a pantry in here,” he said to himself after removing two Styrofoam cups of coffee from a brown paper bag. “Furnishing coffee for the people who work for me is the least I can do.” He heard steps and walked out to the hallway. “Why are you here so early?” he asked Cory Benjamin. “It’s barely seven o’clock.” “I like working when I’m here alone, when I can’t hear a sound. That’s when the ideas flow, and I can concentrate. I’m surprised to see you here so early.” He told Cory about the will and the reactions of his siblings to its provisions. “And can you beat this? I’m thirty-four years old, and I’ve just learned that I have an older sister who I didn’t know about until an hour before I introduced you to her.
