The Inheritance - Part IV
Years ago, I consulted with a local psychic who told me there’d be “problems with an inheritance.” I had no idea what he was talking about and tossed the comment off as random. Little did I know, my ex husband, an eccentric Czech photographer who lived in London, was worth a small fortune. So when he died, I learned that the psychic’s prediction would come true. Because that’s when our family was introduced to a hostile Russian woman named Vera who would harass our family for years.
THIS IS PART 4 of a FIVE-PART STORY
“Thai massage?” I said, a little shocked. We were in a coffee house in Golders Green. It was 2003 and Werner and I had been apart for twenty-eight years. But he still held a modicum of power over me and I found his presence unsettling. By now he had grown somewhat demented and he began a long winded story about how he had seen a woman in a restaurant and been struck by her beauty – so struck that he approached and made her acquaintance. She must’ve told him she was a massage therapist (in her current life, Vera is a PT) because he went on to talk about Thai massage with the built-in assumption that there’d been a happy ending. It was hard to picture romance between the two, but something was going on, if not only a matter of Vera comforting and giving Werner pleasure in the easiest way she could. Anyway, I went with the story.
It took only a brief time for Vera to totally insert herself into Werner’s life. She became his everything, which meant she took over his day-to-day existence, involving herself in his lucrative photography business and gaining more and more power.
I was happy that he had found someone, but more than a little worried that this someone would take advantage of him and his elderly foibles. She acted like an amorous partner, kissing and cuddling him, but here’s the thing: she already had a man in her life and was the mother of a young child. So that made my antennae go up.
Werner’s health was not good. He was in his upper eighties; his mind was fuzzy and he’d had a form of cancer that caused an open sore in his foot that wouldn’t heal. When I spoke with him on the phone, he was pretty incoherent. But I barely ever spoke to him. Jofka sent him numerous emails, but not a single one was ever answered. Later we learned that Vera had taken charge of his emails, and I suppose she didn’t think it was important for him to communicate with his daughter.
So Werner was very removed from us. I was busy with my own life and didn’t pay much attention to what was going on with my colorful ex-husband. Nor did Jofka, who was herself mired in a bad marriage. We knew his health was bad, but still we were shocked when we learned he had died at the age of eighty-nine on February 13, 2010.
I was now the sole owner of the house Werner and I had bought together in 1973. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that Vera had hired a van a few short days after Werner’s death, had driven to the house and emptied it of its contents.