Penrose had been a lawyer long enough to know that an unfinished question could do as much harm as an answer, if you left it unfinished out of squeamishness rather than out of respect. He also knew that Evelyn had asked him, in the kitchen, not to be theatrical. "Say the true thing in a plain voice," she had said. "They can survive plain. They have survived me." He opened the folder again. The amendment was on top. The letter, in its fine envelope, lay beneath.
"I am going to answer you," he said to Lydia. "Not because your brother has given permission. Because your mother asked me to, and because you are here, and you were meant to be here from the beginning."
Mark turned. "We had reasons."
"I am sure you did," Penrose said. "They are not mine to weigh." He looked down at the page, then up, so that he would not be a man hiding behind paper. "The house and the land under it at 418 Orchard Street do not pass to Helen Crowe, Mark Harlan, and Lydia Harlan in equal shares. They do not pass to any one of those three. They pass, outright, to Ruth Elaine Keene."