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in the doorway.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “I’m always here for you, babe.”
    I embraced her words even though I knew they weren’t true. She’d left me in many a bar, and she’d stood me up for lunch so many times I quit making plans with her. Rose wasn’t a person you could count on, but it meant something that she was here today when most of the people I hung out with had vanished the second news got out about my dad.
    Molly Young’s dad died? Guess she won’t be up for a party. Move on to the next person. Oops. There’s Molly. Walking toward me. I’ll just duck into this alley and pretend I didn’t see her.
    I wondered if they taught classes on how to deal with death, from the outside and the inside. But I seriously doubted any class could help with death from the inside.
    An hour after Rose left I forced myself to get off the couch. I took a shower, washed my hair, put on a clean dress—something black and left over from my Goth phase because I didn’t feel like wearing a happy dress.
    In the kitchen I poured cereal and milk into a bowl, then slid onto a stool at the center island. I was glad I felt so horrible because it gave me a focus other than the death of my father. Like cutting, only with booze. It worked. Maybe I would have another drink after I met with the lawyer.
    I took a cautious bite of cereal, forcing myself to chew and swallow. A couple more bites and I was shoving the bowl away.
    My phone.
    There was a way to track your phone if you lost it, but I couldn’t deal with figuring that out right now. I’d installed the app but never tested it. And I had to be at the lawyer’s office in less than fifteen minutes.
    With my hair still wet and soaking into the back of my dress, I filled my Nalgene bottle with water, grabbed my car keys and messenger bag, did a search for the missing phone, didn’t find it, then checked the address on the business card the guy had given me yesterday.
    His office was at St. Anthony Main near downtown Minneapolis. I might make it but I might not, I thought as I headed for my faded black Corolla parked on the street in front of the house.

Chapter 5
    Yep, I was going to be late. Traffic was bad, I hit the lights wrong, and there was construction on University Avenue. But at least the meters at St. Anthony Main took credit cards. I parked, inserted my Visa, stood there for five minutes trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, finally got it to work, and headed across the brick street to the restored stone mill that housed restaurants, cafés, a theater, and offices.
    Ordinarily I would enjoy a trip to this part of Minneapolis since it was one of my favorite spots with the falls and the Minneapolis skyline. But not today. Today the view didn’t even touch me.
    I entered the old mill at street level, looked up Richard Stinson on the wall directory, then wound around the cavernous building with its brick walls and restored wooden floors until I found the door with the lawyer’s name on it off in the corner of a narrow hallway near the restroom.
    I was feeling nauseous again. I thought about ducking inside the restroom but I was already thirty minutes late.
    Did you knock on a lawyer’s door? Or just walk in?
    I tested the knob. The door opened and I stepped inside a small waiting room. From behind a half-wall a woman peered over her computer, looking at me in a way that said I wasn’t her office’s normal clientele. “May I help you?”
    “Molly Young,” I told her. “I have an appointment with Mr. Stinson. I’m sorry. I know I’m late. Traffic was bad.”
    She smiled, all cool now. “Go right in. He’s expecting you. The room at the end of the hallway.”
    “Thanks.”
    As I walked away I heard the rattle of a plastic phone and the receptionist saying, “Your eleven o’clock is here.”
    I had no idea what to expect. I knew nothing about lawyers or legal stuff, and my father had never talked to me about his will. I was actually surprised he had