"No," Maggie answered firmly. "None. And he never will. I made sure of that two years ago." She wrapped both hands around her cappuccino. "When all this started, Kevin tried to use Toby. Tried to position himself as a grandfather with rights, as leverage. So I made it part of an early settlement. He signed over any claim to guardianship in exchange for something he wanted at the time. He didn't even fight it, Michael. He signed away his own grandson without blinking, because he never wanted Toby. He only ever wanted what having Toby could get him."
Michael's jaw tightened.
"And Toby?" Michael asked. "How does he feel about all this?"
"Toby can't stand him," Maggie said plainly. "And I don't blame him one bit. Kevin and his girlfriend, Vanessa, were never kind to that boy. They'd make little comments. Leave him out of things. Make him feel like he was in the way." Her voice dropped, and the hard edge in it could have cut glass. "Toby is just a boy who lost his parents. The two of them treated him like an inconvenience. So no. Toby is well rid of him, and he knows it."
Michael had to put his coffee down and take a slow breath before he trusted himself to speak as the anger at Kevin intensified.
"Maggie," Michael said carefully. "I need to ask you one more thing, and then I'll stop bringing up your grandson. But it’s something I need to be clear on.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “What about Toby's inheritance from Daniel and Laura? I know they had a highly successful investment firm.” He watched her and saw her shoulders stiffen. “Has Kevin ever tried to touch it?"
Maggie's eyes flashed.
"He tried," Maggie confirmed. "Once. About eighteen months ago. Daniel and Laura left everything in trust for Toby, with me as the sole executor. Kevin's attorney made some noise about him having a claim as a step-grandparent, about the funds being mismanaged, about needing oversight." She shook her head. "It went nowhere, because there was nowhere for it to go. But the fact that he tried, Michael. The fact that he sat in a room and tried to get his hands on the money our son left for his own little boy."
"That's despicable," Michael said, and meant every syllable.
"That's Kevin," Maggie answered. “He has dollar signs for eyeballs and sees everyone as his personal money machine.”
For a moment, they just sat there, the morning light warm on the old wood table, the anger between them not at each other but at a man who deserved every bit of it.
Then Michael made himself put it away, pick the file back up, because anger was not going to help her, and a strategy was.
"All right," Michael said. "Here's where I think we stand, and I want you to hear the good news in this, because there's a lot of it."
"I'm listening," Maggie said, her eyes locked on him.
"The boutique is the heart of his claim, and his claim is weak," Michael explained. "Your grandparents left you that building outright, years before you ever met Kevin. That makes it separate property, plain and simple. It was never a marital asset. He has no legitimate path to half of it, and any competent attorney knows that. The reason this has dragged on for two years is not that he has a strong case. It's that he has an attorney willing to file motion after motion to run up your costs and wear you down until you offer him something just to make it stop."
"That's exactly what it's felt like," Maggie said softly.
"That ends now," Michael told her. "The strategy isn't complicated. We stop reacting to his motions and start setting the pace ourselves. We file to have the boutique formally recognized as separate property, with the deed and your grandparents' will as evidence. The moment a judge affirms that, the whole foundation of his claim collapses, and his attorney knows it. Once that's gone, there's nothing left to drag out. He'll settle, because there'll be nothing left to gain by not settling."
Maggie was staring at him.
"You make it sound so simple," Maggie said.
"It is simple," Michael answered. "It was always simple. You just had an inexperienced attorney who didn't have the experience to see it, going up against an attorney who was counting on exactly that."
Maggie let out a long breath, and Michael watched two years of weight visibly lift off her shoulders, and it was one of the most satisfying things he'd seen in a long time.
"Thank you," Maggie said, and her voice wasn't quite steady. "You have no idea how I'd started to think it would never end. That I'd be fighting Kevin forever."
"You won't," Michael promised her. "Give me two weeks to get up to speed and file properly. I'd be surprised if this isn't finished before the end of summer."
Their breakfast arrived. They ate while talking companionably. Somewhere during their breakfast, their conversation drifted away from Kevin to everyday subjects that made them both relax. They talked about Toby, about how well he was doing, about the gang of children running wild between Heart House and the beach all summer. They talked about Maggie's boutique and the brides she was dressing, and the dream of the pavilion on the stretch of land behind Hearts Hotel. They laughed, nodded, commented, and took their time eating as if trying to prolong their time together.
It was comfortable. It was so comfortable it frightened Michael. It was like they were on an easy date, but it wasn’t a date, he reminded himself. It was a business breakfast, nothing more
But underneath the comfort or pretending it was nothing more than a business meal, the other thing kept surfacing. Maggie’s eyes held his a beat too long across the table. The small private smile she gave him when he made her laugh. The moment their hands both reached for the little jug of cream at the same time, brushing, and neither of them quite pulled back as fast as they should have.
Michael was sixty years old, felt like a teenager, and couldn’t, for the life of him, make himself stop.
They lingered over the coffee far longer than the meeting required, and finally Maggie glanced at her wristwatch.
“Oh, goodness,” Maggie said, her eyes widening. “Is that the time?” She glanced up at him. “I’m so, so sorry, Michael, but I’m going to have to rush off soon. I have a fitting at the boutique at eleven.”
“Of course,” Michaels said, draining his coffee and pushing his chair back. “I’d better get back as well.” He smiled warmly. “I have two big cases I’m working on.”
