“I’ll call Rosita,” Katie said. “She’ll have lunch.”

“Thanks.” He yawned and then straightened up in the armchair. “All right, Uncle Fred. I’m ready.”

“Yes,” I said. “Go ahead.”

Fred went. “The first step is just a little legal exercise to make everything official.” Fred looked at me. “You are Jason Rove Boyer, the son of Melvin Howard Boyer and his first wife, Ann Rove Boyer, deceased?”

“That’s what they always said. I wouldn’t remember.”

I hadn’t meant it to be funny, but he laughed, just like a family lawyer was supposed to, relieving the tension. He should have been in movies. “You are twenty-eight years old, you have been married once, to your present wife, Katherine Sevildray Boyer, and you have no children. That’s all correct?”

“Unless there’s something I don’t know. We only got married once, didn’t we?” I said to Katie. That was supposed to be funny.

“Just once.”

I would do it again, though, and she would, too. The first time she really did do it for my money. But we’d come to know each other, even in just three years. I’m not much of a companion, and she has other friends for talking and spending time. It was deeper than that, something between two complex people. I hadn’t known how much I needed someone like her.

Fred chuckled again, breaking my thoughts. Sometimes I wondered what he was thinking. “I need to know if someone is going to come out of the woodwork.” Just a tiny edge on his voice. “No children?” “Not a one,” I said.

“And you are Eric Melvin Boyer, also the son of Melvin Howard Boyer and Ann Rove Boyer, deceased?”

“Yes, sir. They’re both deceased now.” This was bothering him more than the funeral. Or else he just wasn’t feeling well.

“Yes, of course.” Fred shifted into deep sympathy mode. “It will be fine, Eric. Now. You are twenty-five years old, you have never been married, and you have no children. That’s correct?”