Praying for Sleep Read Online Free PDF

adopted a resolution banning gender, and sexual-orientation discrimination. You must know all this, Portia." She turned to her husband. "Didn't you send her copies of the correspondence?"
    "Please, Lis, a little credit. She's a beneficiary. She had to be copied."
    "I probably got it. But, you know, if it's got a lawyer's letterhead on it and there's no check inside, who pays any attention?"
    Lis started to speak but remained silent. Owen continued, "Your father did a codicil to his will, cutting his bequest to the school to a thousand. In protest."
    "The old shit."
    "Portia!"
    "When he wrote the chancellor telling him about the change, he said he wasn't, I'm pretty much quoting, he wasn't against women and deviates. He was simply for tradition."
    "I repeat, what a shit."
    "The school's challenging the codicil."
    "What do we do?"
    "Basically, all we have to do is keep an amount equal to their original bequest in the estate account until it's settled. You don't have to worry. We'll win. But we still have to go through the formalities."
    "Not worry?" Portia blurted. "It's a million dollars."
    "Oh, they'll lose," Owen announced. "He did execute the codicil during that spell when he was taking Percodan pretty regularly and Lis was spending a lot of time at the house. That's what the school's lawyer's going to argue. Lack of capacity and undue influence by one of the other beneficiaries."
    "Why do you say they won't win?"
    Grim-faced, Lis sipped her champagne. "I don't want to hear this again."
    Her husband smiled.
    "I'm serious, Owen."
    He said to his sister-in-law, "The lawyer for the school? I did a little investigating. Turns out he's been negotiating contracts on behalf of the school with a company his wife's got a major interest in. Big conflict of interest. And a felony, by the way. I'm going to offer him four or five to settle."
    Lis said to Portia, "He makes it sound like a legal tactic. To me, it's blackmail."
    "Of course it's blackmail," Portia said. "So? But you think this lawyer'll talk the school into settling?"
    "He'll be... persuasive, I'm sure," Owen said. "Unless he wants an address change to the Bridewell Men's Colony."
    "So basically, he's fucked." Portia laughed. She held up her glass. "Good job, attorney."
    Owen tapped his glass to hers.
    Portia drained her champagne and let Owen pour her more. To her sister she said, "I wouldn't get on this boy's bad side, Lis. He might do to you what he does unto others."
    Owen's stony facade slipped and he laughed briefly. Lis said, "I guess I just feel insulted. I didn't even know the school was getting any money in the will. I mean, can you imagine Father even talking to me about it? Undue influence? I say let them sue."
    "Well, I say let our lawyer handle it." With her working-girl hair rimmed by the black lace headband Portia seemed miraculously transported back to six or seven — the age at which it first was clear that the sisters would be such different people. This process seemed to continue, by inches and miles, Lis sensed, even tonight.
    Owen poured more Moet. "Never would've been a problem if your father'd kept his money to himself and his mouth shut. That's the moral: no good deed goes unpunished."
    "Your services expensive, Owen?" Portia asked wryly.
    "Never. At least not for beautiful women. It's in my retainer agreement."
    Lis stepped between these two people, bound to her one by blood and one by law, and put her arms around Owen. "See why he's such a rainmaker?"
    "Can't make much rain if he doesn't charge."
    "I didn't say I'm free." Owen looked at Portia. "I just said I'm not expensive. You always have to pay for quality."
    Lis walked to the stairway. "Portia, come here. I want to show you something."
    The sisters left Owen stacking the papers and climbed upstairs. The silence again grew thick and Lis realized that it was her husband's presence that had made conversation possible between the sisters.
    "Here we go." She stepped in front of Portia and then