“What about the current beneficiaries of your will? Your daughter, any grandchildren you might have, your church. You risk leaving them with a substantially reduced bequest. Your estate’s only assets will be your residence and your investments. There’s no telling how precipitately they could decline in value over the coming years.”

She rolled her eyes, and he had the feeling he’d been using too many words again. “My daughter is well married to a man who can provide for her and any children she might have. And Lord knows there are people aplenty tossing money at St. Alban’s. Maybe I’ll leave all my money to the clinic.” She paused, frowned, and set the edges of her hands against her narrow lips. “No, I take that back. Whatever’s left over when I die I’ll put into trust. Let my daughter decide what to do with it. If she needs it, she can have it, and if she don’t, she can give it away.”

“But is this what the Ketchems would have wanted for you? An old age of counting every penny? Surely they left you the Millers Kill house and the Cossayuharie farm as a means to ensure your comfort and happiness?”

“My late husband’s parents have always been good to me. But they, more than anyone else, would understand. About this clinic. About how I want Jonathon’s name to be remembered.” She wrapped her long fingers over the turned posts of her chair’s armrests and shifted her gaze away from him, to the surface of his desk. “Does that file box of yours have anything about what happened to me and my family?”

“Yes.” He swallowed. “Yes, it does.”

“Let me tell you something about comfort and happiness, young man.” She looked at him head-on, trapping him with her gaze. “My husband and I both came from good families, successful families, and when we wed, we were hard-set on making a success of our own farm. We got fifty acres near the Sacandaga Vlaie that was cheap because it flooded every few years, and we worked. We sweated, we scrimped, we lived for the day after the day when we’d have everything we wanted for our comfort, everything we needed for our happiness.” Her face, with skin in sharp-edged folds over her bones, showed every one of her fifty-four years.