When he got home, he walked outside, stared at the space, all but heard the water spilling against rock. Walked back inside and into his home office.

Do it, he wrote. You’re starting to piss me off.

Her reply came moments later.

I get that a lot. Do you want a separate contract, or do you want to wait until I calculate the rest?

Figure out the whole damn thing. I’m not going to say yes to the whole damn thing, but figure it. I’ll pick and choose. And I’ve decided you’re not as hot as you think you are.

I should have full numbers for you by Gabe’s game. Either way you go, if I see you there, I’ll buy you a hot dog. And my hotness, unharnessed, is incendiary. Do you/can you set up LLCs?

I can. It’ll cost you a million dollars. And a hot dog.

Great. We’ll negotiate. I’ll call your office for an appointment.

Zane found the rest of his week surprisingly full. He hired an intern, a sharp grad student with ties to the area. She’d been raised by her grandparents—father unknown, mother long gone. As her grandparents had retired to Lakeview a few years earlier, she wanted a summer position close by.

You didn’t get much closer than smack on Main Street, and as she hit every mark he’d aimed for, Zane and Gretchen Filbert came to amicable terms.

Which meant he had to come up with another desk, and all that went with it.

He drew up an unhappy woman’s marital separation agreement, talked his former US History teacher out of suing his own brother over what was, essentially, a family spat, took on a client who needed help settling her mother’s estate as the attorney of record was also dead.

He couldn’t claim a jammed calendar, but for a guy launching a private law practice in a small community, he figured he was doing just fine.

He returned from what he thought of as a house call frazzled, exhausted, and damp from the afternoon thunderstorm, and dropped into one of the chairs in reception.

Maureen swiveled around to study him. “You have the ‘I’ve just spent two hours with Mildred Fissle’ look. Eyes glazed, hair sticking up, as the electric charges in your brain shot through it, mouth slack from shock.

“Want coffee?”

“Will it have whiskey in it?”

“No. You have an appointment in thirty minutes. No booze for you.”

“She—you know, I thought she was ancient and scary when I was a kid. Now she’s really ancient and just plain terrifying. I had to sit in her parlor in this little rock of a chair—two hours with my knees up at my ears. I had to drink horrible tea that tasted like muddy flowers.”

Maureen gave him a deliberately exaggerated sad face. “Poor baby.”

“Everything smelled like withered rose petals and cats. She has five cats—that I saw. There may be more. One of them sat there and never stopped staring at me. It didn’t blink, so I thought maybe it was dead and stuffed. Then it moved.”

He shuddered. “I’m going to have to go back there, Maureen. I’m going to have to go back.”

Enjoying him, adoring him, Maureen leaned forward. “She wanted to change her will again, didn’t she?”

“She dragged out half a million previous wills, codicils, and all these little handwritten notes attached to them. Dozens of Post-it Notes, with cats on them.”

Maureen rose. “I’m going to get you a Coke, sweetie. Just sit and breathe for a minute.”

She came back with a cold bottle for him, and a glass of the ice water with lemon slice she preferred. “I’m friends with one of her granddaughters, went to school with her. Miss Mildred—even her grandkids call her that—changes her will more often than most change their sheets. Whichever one of her many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren—and the building number of great-greats—happens to be in favor at the moment is told the numerous secret hiding places around the house where she stashes cash, jewelry, bankbooks, insurance policies, the latest will, and so on. Then that one falls out of favor. Miss Mildred writes her notes, changes hiding places, calls her current lawyer, and does it all again.”

“She has six living children,” Zane put in, “twenty-nine grandchildren, sixty-seven greats, and nineteen great-greats. Three more coming.” He took a big glug from the bottle. “And she has specific bequests for every freaking one of them—except the ones she’s decided don’t deserve anything, and those she insists on leaving one dollar. It’s like, these earrings go to Sue, this table goes to Hank, and Wendall gets a dollar because he couldn’t be bothered to come in from Seattle to see me at Christmas.

“It went on like that for two hours.”

“There, there.”

“Funny. Remind me to give you a ‘there, there’ after you spend the rest of your afternoon turning my desperate notes into a legal document.”

“Challenge accepted,” she said when he opened his briefcase, took out a legal pad, a file. “It’ll be easier next time, say, three months from now. Plus, she’s, what, about ninety-eight? She can’t live forever.”

“She’s ninety-nine, and don’t be so sure of that.”

He rose, shifted his briefcase to shoulder strap as his phone signaled a text. He pulled it out as he walked to his office.

Darby.

Are you sitting down? If not, text me when you are. And you might want an adult beverage handy.

He sat at his desk, wondered why he experienced twin tugs of anxiety and delight whenever he heard from Darby McCray.

I’m sitting. And since I’m a professional and it’s only three in the afternoon—and Maureen said no—I have no adult beverage handy.

You might overrule her in a few minutes. I’m sending you an email now, with multiple attachments. I’m catching a couple innings of Gabe’s game tomorrow, then have to work to make up losing this afternoon to rain and lightning. See you there.

He heard the email come in, glanced warily at his computer. How bad could it be? Plus, he wasn’t going to do all the stuff she wanted anyway.

Pick and choose, Walker, he reminded himself. Just pick and choose.

He opened it, laughed out loud at the dancing hot dog GIF. Then downloaded and opened the attachments.

The first, showing just how clever and canny his adversary in this match was, featured drawings illustrating the projected work, completed.

“I’m not falling for it,” he muttered. “Jesus, it’s amazing. But I will not be lulled.”

He moved on to her careful listing of trees, shrubs, plants, with pricing—all guaranteed with replacement at no cost for a year should they croak.

Fair.

Then there was stuff like fill dirt, topsoil, mulch, irrigation systems, pots, urns, planters.

Mostly that made him scratch his head. Why wasn’t dirt just dirt—and shouldn’t it be dirt cheap?

Then came the labor, and when his eyes uncrossed from that, the total.

“Holy fucking shit!”

Maureen ran in. “Language! What’s wrong with you? We could have a client!”

He just pointed to his computer screen.

With the mother’s glare still on her face, Maureen rounded the desk. “Oh good God!”

“See?”

“For landscaping? What are you landscaping, Disneyland? Emily’s told me how reasonable Darby is, and I’ve been thinking about asking her to do a little something for me. But my good lord!”

“Don’t let this put you off. It’s a crazy bunch of stuff. And for some reason, she included the walls and waterfall I already contracted.”

“Waterfall? You want a waterfall?”

“No. Maybe. No. It’s crazy. I’m crazy.”

He brought up the file, showed her. And she made a long, yearning sound.

“It’s so beautiful. Oh, these walls—with the plants? Why, it almost looks like it’s just part of the hill, doesn’t it? Like it grew right there. Zane, it’s wonderful. What else?”

Reluctantly now, he scrolled through the other drawings.

“This is fabulous, beyond fabulous. It’s magic, but, I don’t know, natural magic.”

“You’re not helping,” he muttered.

“Well, bless your heart, I see what I see. Bring back that cost page again.”

When he did, she rubbed his shoulder. “That’s definitely amazing, too. Wait, there’s another page.”

“There can’t be.” But he noted it. “I guess I was too busy having a stroke to notice.”

“Okay, okay,” Maureen reassured, “you see where she’s noted the previous contract and cost—because she’s giving you what she’s calling a Preferred Client discount on the work, including that. It’s a good discount, Zane. Not to say that’s not a lot of money, but it’s a good discount.”

He stared hard at the figures. “She’s cagey—you ask Emily. She’s cagey. She waited to do the discount until after my stroke or heart attack or coma. She waited, and didn’t mention any possible discount when I fell for the wall and waterfall, but she includes them. She was always going to. She’s lulling me. It’s what she does.”

Maureen scrolled back to the pictures, made that sound again. “If she can do all this, she can do a lot more than lull. Well, that girl’s an artist. A magician. What are you going to do?”