Clear and Convincing Proof Read Online Free PDF

that long before I get things in shape upstairs.” She started to say that her plan was to fix up the house and sell it as soon as possible, but she didn’t.
    â€œLet’s have a look.”
    It was worse than the downstairs had been whenshe’d first arrived. She had cleaned out the refrigerator and left the door open, but had done nothing else. There were mats on the floor, rags and paper bags, fast-food boxes, pizza boxes, bottles, broken chairs and a wobbly table, and the whole place was horribly dirty. She was ashamed, humiliated to think that she owned it, more humiliated to think her mother had lived like this for years, until her death from a drug overdose.
    Darren examined the apartment carefully, then nodded. They went back down to her kitchen. “Let’s talk rent,” he said.
    â€œI told you, that’s last on my list.”
    â€œWould $750 a month be okay? That’s more than I’m paying now, but it’s a lot bigger, closer to work and not being crowded by a mall.”
    She poured more tea, got out ice cubes and shook her head. “Next year maybe.”
    â€œI thought we might make a deal,” he said, accepting the freshened tea. He sat down again. “I could start cleaning it up and do some of the other things that need doing, like hauling away the trash, replacing the glass in those windows. In return I get a free month’s rent, and I get to park my truck in the garage. And have my son with me some of the time. He’s eleven and part of the reason I need more space.”
    She stared at him, at a loss.
    â€œI can furnish pretty good references,” he said, and then grinned.
    â€œOh boy, can you! I just hadn’t considered even trying to rent it yet, not for months and months.”
    â€œOkay, think about it and let me know.” He drank more of the tea and put the glass down, then stood up. “See you at the clinic.”
    â€œNo, wait. What am I thinking? Of course, it’s a deal. It’s just so…so unfair for you. To have to clean up that filth, I mean.”
    â€œMy department. Don’t even think of it. Eventually I’ll want a key to the outside door. I’ll probably get started over the weekend. You just stay off that ladder, okay? I’ll get it painted along the way.” He held out his hand. “Deal,” he said. “We can get a rental agreement, whatever it takes, later.”
    They shook hands, and for the first time in her life she fully understood the old expression: to touch a live wire. She knew that he went out to the porch, that he put his shoes on, waved to her and walked out of sight, but she had become immobilized by that touch. Abruptly she sat down and looked at her hand, opened it, closed it hard, opened it.
    â€œOh, my God,” she said under her breath.

4
    â€œW hat it means,” Greg Boardman told Naomi on Thursday night, “is that it’s a legal tangle, a nightmare. When the court granted the power of attorney to Thomas, there was another document, a power of acceptance. Since Donna had a will, the court ruled that her intentions were perfectly clear, and the terms of the will had to be satisfied. Her shares will go to their kids when she dies. Thomas said that when they wrote their wills they were still trying to get the kids interested in the clinic, and had hopes that Lawrence, at least, would get involved. It seemed a good idea, I guess, to bequeath them shares. And now that old will is the determining factor in who will control the clinic.”
    Thomas Kelso’s kids were middle-aged, and noneof them, as far as Naomi could tell, gave a damn about the clinic. Lawrence was a molecular biologist at Princeton; the twin daughters were both married to well-to-do businessmen in Los Angeles.
    â€œI thought Thomas had the authority to vote her shares, even to sell them,” she said.
    â€œHe does. But if he wanted to sell them, he would have to prove it was