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.""And there are some of her old house.""Yes.""Anyway, she's claiming that Bobbie must have stolen a box full of photos and negatives from her family or found it somewhere, and she wants everything returned intact--exactly as Bobbie left it.She wants to see what else is there that might belong to her.""Bobbie didn't take anything from her family: He is her family! He's her brother!"Katherine paused and studied her closely."Do you honestly believe that?""I don't believe it," she said quietly, irritably."I know it.I am absolutely sure of it.""Well, don't be.Please give up that notion right now.Do you understand?""What? Why?""If Bobbie really was her brother--which, I gather, is completely impossible--then we might actually have to turn everything over to her.""I have news for you, Katherine, I have no doubts whatsoever," Laurel said, trying (and failing) to keep her voice calm."Everything fits, it's obvious.Just this morning I had breakfast with some of the guys from the Hotel New England--""Let me guess, Pete and his pals? That must have been a trip.""It was great.They made me a feast.But my point is that even the things they shared with me indicate that Bobbie is this woman's brother.""Really?""Bobbie told them he grew up on Long Island.He told them he had family in Kentucky!""I understand the Long Island connection.What's in Kentucky?""It's where his mother was from.His mother was born and raised in Louisville."Katherine sighed and gave her arm a small squeeze."When you first told me what you recognized in the snapshots, I thought he might have grown up near your swim club, too.Really, I did.And you might still be proven right.Who knows? But--""He was taking pictures of the house--his childhood house!--as late as the mid-1960s! I printed a couple just last night!""Or someone else was--perhaps at this woman's request.""Look--""Laurel, this woman's lawyer was pretty clear that his client's brother died years ago.Decades ago.No one knows how Bobbie got the pictures and the negatives, but this woman wants you to leave them alone.And she wants us to give them back.Which we do not have to do--at least not yet--precisely because she insists that Bobbie wasn't her brother.No relation.That's the key, and that's my point.As long as this Long Island dowager keeps saying that she and Bobbie aren't related, then she isn't an heir and thus can make no claim on the estate based on family."Laurel contemplated this for a moment: The irony wasn't lost on her.If she acknowledged who Bobbie was, then Pamela Buchanan Marshfield would have reason to demand--and, perhaps, be given--the photographs.Apparently, there really were people out there who wanted them.Bobbie's fears might have been disproportionate to reality, but they were not wholly delusional."If BEDS keeps the prints once I'm done working with them--" she began."Not BEDS, the City of Burlington.The legal term is escheat.Because Bobbie died without a will, his possessions go to the city to dispose of.And in Burlington that means selling the assets with the money going to the school system--though in this case I'm pretty sure the city will sell them to us for, say, a dollar, so we can use them as a fund-raiser.""Which is why you want us to hang on to them.""That's part of the reason.But I also want them because they were the only thing in the world that mattered enough to one of our clients that he brought them with him wherever he went.We need to respect that.And I want us to give Bobbie the show he deserved.I love the idea of an exhibition reminding the city that the homeless are people, too, and have talents and dreams and accomplishments.""And so I can continue to print them."Katherine paused, and for a moment Laurel feared that she was going to tell her to stop.Finally: "Yes.Just.just remember that these photos belonged to a man who.who wasn't who you imagine he was.And"--she looked at Laurel in a way the young social worker recognized because it was precisely the way her mother gazed at her when she was worried--"try not to talk to any lawyers who call you.But, if you must, certainly don't insist that Bobbie was anyone's brother.Okay?"Laurel nodded, but she was so angry that she felt the corners of her eyes start to quiver.She was furious both because she felt she was being muzzled and because it was clear that not even Katherine believed what she knew was a fact.Katherine gave her a hug and waved into her office at Tony, but he glared at the director with a look of such condescension and contempt that Katherine rolled inside like a wave and apologized to him formally.Then she turned from the two of them and started down the corridor.Before she was around the corner and gone, however, she stopped and added, "And I'm serious about this identity thing.Okay?"Laurel nodded, but her mind was already on the photos and the work she would do that weekend in the university darkroom.PATIENT 29873.no interest in the other patients or socializing in the dayroom.Auditory hallucinations appearing to diminish, but still has denial of key event and significant gaps in memory compatible with dissociation.From the notes of Kenneth Pierce,attending psychiatrist,Vermont State Hospital, Waterbury, VermontCHAPTER FOURTEENDAVID FULLER was sitting in the pediatrician's waiting room with his older daughter on Friday morning, painfully aware that every plush animal, plastic toy, and glossy magazine was a veritable petri dish of infectious agents.Worse, the small children in the room with them were coughing and wheezing and sneezing.He wanted them quarantined somewhere far, far away from Marissa--who, at the moment, felt just fine [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]