The Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe Read Free Book Online Page A

clicked open, and Nicole motioned to an area on the stone driveway where I should park.
    The first thing that surprised me was that Elizabeth opened her own door. I was absolutely sure she would have a dozen Downton Abbey –style footmen who called her “your grace” and brushed her hair with boar bristles, but no. And the next thing that surprised me was how beautiful and healthy she was at seventy-six years, five months, and seventeen days old. I expected her to be in declining health if she was thinking of selling a large part of her estate. But here she was, ready to compete in the Mrs. Grandmother of the Universe pageant.
    â€œYou must be the women from Christie’s,” she said, her cream bouclé suit resisting a crease as she reached her thin hand out to us. “Louise warned me that you were young.” She moved out of the way and let us through the heavy, wooden, double French doors.
    â€œAs you both know, youth is not the word of the day. We’re dealing with old things here, including me.”
    Nicole and I started gushing—she looked amazing, sensational, her house was stunning, her collection unparalleled, we were thrilled, no, elated, to get a chance to see it, to meet her, we were bursting at the seams, what an honor—and through our gushing, she just kept a tight smile on her face and ushered us inside her house.
    She led us to what looked like the first of eight living rooms. She pointed to a beige high-backed sofa for us to sit on, which was placed next to a beautiful piece, which I recognized as the work of eighteenth-century Annapolis cabinetmaker John Shaw.
    We spent the first hour at Elizabeth’s not up to our elbows in mahogany looking for signatures and hidden drawers in precise places to authenticate the pieces, but listening to Elizabeth tell us about her late husband, Adam.
    â€œYou can’t imagine how lonely it is to be a widow,” Elizabeth said, bowing her head slightly, her tight gray chignon unmoving.
    Really? But didn’t she have six children?
    â€œDeath is terrible,” I said, solemnly bowing my head to match hers. What was I saying? How did I know death was terrible? I had never died.
    â€œLoneliness is terrible,” I said, backtracking.
    â€œIt is,” she agreed, patting her eyes with a handkerchief she seemed to have pulled from the couch cushions.
    â€œLoneliness is killing me. My bones are shaking. I need a change.”
    She needed a change, did she? Well! I had a change for her. Minimalism! Was it time for me to pull up pictures of Le Corbusier buildings on my iPad? Tell her that stark white walls with nothing on them were this decade’s Thomas Eakins paintings? Or maybe I’d suggest the naturalist route. This woman should kiss all this Texas gaudiness away and move to Walden Pond. Really find herself in her final years. She needed to shed the shackles of wealth and make like a Buddhist.
    â€œThere are, of course, my six children. I always thought I would leave it in their hands.”
    Heartless worms! All children were. They didn’t even come visit her, by the sounds of things. They didn’t deserve her furniture. What was I supposed to say? Screw your children? Yes, that’s what I was supposed to say, just not in so many words.
    â€œIt’s possible, if they’re not passionate about American antiques, that they would immediately sell your collection and spend the money on other things,” I said, talking about how so many young wealthy people wanted private jets and private islands.
    â€œThe values are different,” I continued. “They don’t want Chippendale and Queen Anne; they want fast money, fast cars, Swedish furniture made of metal.” She physically recoiled when I strung that last phrase together. I could tell she was having visions of her huge house filled with IKEA furniture with impossible-to-pronounce names covered in umlauts.
    I wanted to tell her