“I’ll be there, Fred.”

I got in the car, but not fast enough. Nathan Kern floated elegantly up to the window.

“Jason! I don’t know what to say.” Not that that had ever stopped him from saying it. “It just doesn’t seem possible.” If Fred was the king’s chamberlain, Nathan was the archbishop.

“Apparently it was,” I said. I was the court jester.

“We will need to talk. I know the foundation will be as important for you as for your father.” Selfless nobility, thy name is Nathan Kern.

“I don’t plan to have much part in it.”

He was surprised at that, and he shouldn’t have been. He knew me better. “But it was always Melvin’s foremost concern.” His elegant fingers were trembling. I thought the diamonds would fall out of his cuff links.

“He left his estate to it. I feel sorry for you, Mr. Kern. You have some big responsibilities now.” I was getting tired of the day or I might have been a little nicer. I could feel Katie preparing the lecture. “Give me a week, and I’ll be glad to come see you.” By then I might even build up some curiosity about him and his world. There had to be something beneath the sanctimony.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said.

I took that as a good-bye and closed my window.

We finally got out onto the road. “You could have acted like an adult,” Katie said.

“That’s not my way.”

We’d come up behind a truck, and there was no place to pass.

The coast road went on a few more miles like this, two winding lanes. “Everyone there was looking to you to take your father’s place.”

“I’d rather die.”

“Jason.”

I punched the accelerator and passed blind on a curve. The road ahead was clear so I kept the speed up. Katie held on to her shoulder belt.

“You don’t have to kill me, too.”

I slowed down. “All right, I won’t. But the only reason I’m not taking this car off a cliff is because I don’t want to die the same way Melvin did.”