The Third Part of Chapter 13: We Will Remember

In a lounge, behind closed doors, Clarissa, her parents and James’s parents were discussing Ryan’s least favourite topic: inheritances.

“We signed a prenuptial, detailing that should one of us die, the other would inherit all of their possessions,” said Clarissa, showing the aforementioned agreement.

How I hate this, Ryan thought. This at least is going much more smoothly than Katie’s divorce settlement. In that case, there had been no prenuptial signed, and the ex-lovers were arguing over every last small detail, as half of the possessions would go to Katherine, and the other half to Mike. They had several immense fights: the house first and foremost, and then there was the car, and the flat-screen television, purchased back when such things were expensive and flashy items of opulence, rather than a fixture of every third living room; thus, Katherine and Mike both regarded the television with a kind of attachment that they should have reserved for each other, as was noted by Katherine, her parents, and his parents during the whole messy process. The car was another major headache; a BMW purchased for its glamour value rather than practicality, Mike had wanted to sell it, because for him, one car was like any other. Katherine, on the other hand, wanted to keep it, and due to all the bad blood, there was quite a feud between them. Mike ended up selling the car; it was quite fortunate that all this was behind them. There would certainly not be a repeat: the prenuptial agreement was brief––only 250 words––clear and ironclad: Clarissa would be getting the house, and various other things. That it was brief made it a nice agreement, thought he. He was quite glad that she had promised to continue to maintain her friendship with Patricia and himself, which was after all very easy to do considering they only lived a few blocks apart.

“It says you’ll be inheriting the house,” said Katherine. “Jim didn’t pay off his mortgage completely; it was only about half-paid when he died,” She had reviewed the details of James’s finances just before reading the agreement, and was wondering about the issue.

“The bank says the mortgage needs to be paid, and I agreed to continue paying the mortgage on the house; it’s a very nice house,” she said.

Margaret thought: a fine mess he left my daughter in; in February, she was a happy civil servant, and now she’s a pregnant widow assuming someone else’s debt. There was not much to do, though; she needed a place to live, the bank needed its money, hence her decision to continue paying the mortgage, which was like a financial memento to James’s memory in this way.

“Well, I think the agreement is quite clear, and of course this would stand for a will, so there’s not that much to discuss,” said Ryan.

“Agreed,” said Patricia and Margaret, while Hyram nodded, half-distractedly, as he wished to return to Toronto. Thus, the discussion was over in four minutes, and there was no need for a lawyer.

I much prefer something like this to that divorce settlement between Kate and that piece of meat, thought Patricia. Why hadn’t she agreed to a prenuptial like Jim and Clarissa?


Katherine, who was driving home, considered Clarissa with a degree of jealousy; the marriage had ended when the two of them were still in love, rather than in a messy divorce, like her own. This was due to her mistakes as much as to Mike; they talked little after the wedding for a married couple, and intimacy was missing in bed. If only she had signed a prenuptial; if only she had met another man; if only they had continued to love one another, then maybe they would still be together. She then tried to banish the regretful thoughts from her mind, first because she would rather not be reminded of her past and secondly because she needed to concentrate on the road in front of her. She wouldn’t be attending the wake; she had work to attend to, she thought, though she was deluding herself: her job of teaching science was easy, and at this moment, there was relatively little after-hours work. Her thoughts again turned to James, this time when he was studying at the University of Western Ontario, when he had been more distant than before, but still amicable enough and more like the James who had just died.

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