Perri O’Shaughnessy - Breach Of Promise

“You think that’ll smoke her out.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. She lies and I pull tricks on her. What a way to do business.”

“It’s for her own good.”

“Speaking of things being expensive, how much is this shadow jury of Genevieve’s going to cost?”

“You ought to check with her, but the last one she did for me-oh, between forty and fifty thousand. Hire the people, Genevieve’s time, all that.”

“What? That’s impossible! We just don’t have that kind of money, Winston.”

“Okay, look, I’ll talk with Genevieve. We’ll work with you on that, see how we can minimize our costs. And then you’ll have to find the money. Just keep thinking about your piece of the pie, and what a small investment it is against your return. I do wish I could help more with the finances,” Winston said. “This is an expensive business. It sure is. I’ll try to kick in something later on.”

“Lindy said something about being able to come up with some more money at some point…”

“See! You’re getting the hang of this business already. If you need money, you get money.”

“I’m still very-concerned.”

“Go ahead, sweat,” Winston said. “We’ll come up and sweat with you. We’re workin’ it, that’s why you’re sweating. That’s just how it goes. We’re getting started. We’re with you. You hear?”

“I hear.”

“Yes. You hear. But do you hear and believe?”

“I’m working on that,” she said, her heart a little lighter.

Lindy returned Nina’s call on Monday night. “Alice said you called me. I’m not sure why she waited so long to mention it except that she’s mad about something. Anyway, I wanted to tell you I’ve decided I’m not going to be attending the rest of the depositions. Is that a problem?”

“No, but why not?”

“I have to get out of this place,” she said. “This whole situation is making me crazy. Some days I know we’ll win and I’m going to walk away with my fair share, and other days, I see myself five years from now, spritzing flowers all day long, working for Alice at the shop I helped her buy. Or maybe even living with her, like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in a horror movie. I’d play the former hotshot, now faded and out of my mind, wallowing in a glorious past. Alice would be crippled, having shot that gun one too many times, and we’d live out our poverty-stricken lives in a ramshackle old place in black and white, all the color having left with Mike and my money.”

“Don’t worry so much. You’ll be all right.”

“I hope that’s true. But the big reason I’m not coming is I don’t think I can stand to hear Mike’s version of what went on between us until I have to, during the trial.”

“What will you do?” Nina envisioned some other friend’s house, or maybe Lindy would move to a suite at Caesar’s.

“I got a form in the mail from the Nevada Mining Commission. My dad used to go out to this canyon out in the Carson range and visit this claim we had,” Lindy said.

“A mining claim?”

“Yes, he thought he’d find a vein of pure silver the Comstock lode miners missed. He was always looking for a fast buck. A real dreamer. He never had the patience to work the mine properly, but I’d go out there with him and we’d dig around and stay in an old trailer he’d found somewhere. You have to work the claim every year and file some paperwork or you lose it, but if you do that, you can keep it indefinitely. The claim and the trailer were all he left me.”

Nina said, “You’re not thinking of doing what I’m thinking you’re thinking of doing, are you?”

“Well, the trailer’s got a radio and propane and a generator. There’s a water tank out back. Don’t worry, I’ll be back when it’s my turn to get on the grill.”

“But why? Why would you do that?”

“I’m broke,” Lindy said. “Now there’s a big difference between broke and poor. Broke is a temporary thing. Poor is different. I’ve been poor, and I know the difference. I’ve got prospects. I’ve got a place to live. By God, that’s one thing that’s not in Mike’s name. It’s warmer down there, only three thousand feet altitude, no snow. I can do some riding and some thinking.”

“Riding?”

“My horse, Comanche. Mike doesn’t own Comanche either. I looked at what I have right here and you know what? I’ve been worse off.”

“You don’t have to live like that,” Nina said.

“Look, Nina, this is temporary. I know you’re putting out a lot for me and I know you can’t do it all. I’ve been able to scrape together a few thousand, and that goes to you today. You get every penny I can find right now to win this case.”

Grateful she did not have to ask again for money, Nina wondered, not for the first time, why a woman who had worked for so long could have so little left. “But how will I reach you?”

“Don’t worry. It’s only a little more than an hour away by car. And there’s a gas station and a little store where the highway meets the dirt road into the mountains. There’s a phone there. I know the couple that run the place.”

“I don’t know, Lindy. I-”

“What business is it of yours?” Lindy said testily. “I’m a grown woman. I’ll take care of myself. I grew up like this, Nina. What’d you think, I’m just some soft society matron who can’t tie her own shoes?”

“It’s not right,” Nina said. “I don’t feel I’m taking good care of you. You shouldn’t have this kind of hardship.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Lindy,” Nina said. “I want to ask you again about that agreement.”

“I signed it.”

“You did sign it?”

“I was lying, and you knew it. Don’t pretend.”

“Why did you lie, Lindy?”

“I’d almost forgotten all about it until I saw his lawyer waving it around. To me, it meant nothing at the time, just a piece of paper talking about money we might never have. But you were so grim-looking when you saw it. I got scared.”

“Who prepared it?”

“I typed it up. Mike asked me to. He wanted me to sign it, so I did. So now we’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Did you mean to sign away any rights you might have in the company, Lindy?” Nina said, her voice shaking a little from the magnitude of the question.

“I was willing to do that, since it was the main obstacle to our getting married,” Lindy explained. “He told me-he promised-that if I signed the paper we’d get married. And that’s, I swear to God, exactly how it went.”

“And then?”

“And then, like I said before, he had to go out of town. When he came back, I said if we didn’t get married, I’d leave him. And he sweet-talked me. He didn’t want me to leave. In other words, live with it. And I stayed, because I loved him. That’s the whole story, Nina.”

Nina put aside the melange of thoughts Lindy stirred up, concentrating instead on writing as much as she could of the story on the legal pad in front of her.

“So, he didn’t hold a gun to my head,” Lindy went on, “or try to punch me out.”

“But he promised he’d marry you if you signed it.”

Lindy said bitterly, “That’s right. And I remember what you told me. I know there’s no legal help for somebody breaking their promise to marry you.”

“No, there are no breach-of-promise suits,” Nina said in a vague tone. “But a gift made on the assumption that a marriage will take place may be recovered.”

“What does that mean?” Lindy said.

“It refers to a seldom-used statute that harks back to the days of buggies and girls in crinolines you just reminded me about. But I think-I’ll get back to you about that.”

“How are we doing now, Nina? Have I wrecked everything?”