You know, I think people have this image of dying where you spend all of your time being very noble and...well I mean, it just isn't the case. I've sat with dying people many times, none of them ever really felt like being solemn and noble, I don't think. So he just needed a distraction and darlin', I have to say you'd be hard pressed to find a better one."
"I think people will buy into all sort of bullshit to avoid looking someone else's pain in the face," Allegra said calmly.
She'd laughed at the funeral. Stood there in her motor jacket and tangerine hi-tops, stared his whole damn blue-blood family in its collective greedy face and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. They hadn't understood the joke--not until the reading of the will afterward.
It still gave Allegra's conscience a fuzzy warm glow to remember her "mother"-in-law's face upon learning where the money would go.
"So," she rubbed her hands briskly, a gesture more drama than necessity. "That's my fish story. Quid pro quo, Pace." Leaning back in her chair, the blond raised her brows in dare. "Your turn."