As Diane held both the dark plastic card and the paper card with shaking hands, looking down on the cards, breathing deeply to gather herself, Bette continued, “Once you’re in the room, go to the silver desk behind my office chair, that’s set again the wall. It contains our safe. Pass the key card over the middle. A silver panel should pop up. If that doesn’t work, just tap the middle of the desk, and an illuminated number panel should appear. Punch in the same sequence of numbers on that card. Then the panel should pop up.”

Diane finally drew her eyes up to look at Bette, her blue eyes set and determined now. Bette gave her a small smile, acknowledging her resolve, and then said, “Flip the panel up on one end. I had disabled the security feature that required mine or Tina’s hand print yesterday. But there is an illuminated number panel that will appear. Punch in the same sequence of numbers. This will pop the safe open. The door of the safe is the one that looks like the door of a built-in wine-cabinet under the silver desk. That’s just a disguise, so the safe only looks like a wine cabinet from outside.” Bette smiled wryly at Diane and Jules in turn.

Diane returned her smile and nodded her understanding. “Okay, inside the safe are a couple of envelopes with cash for any expenses, our passports, and papers in a leather file, which include mine and Tina’s individual wills, recently notarized, as well as a joint will, notarized also.  In the wills you’ll see that Angelica will eventually be adopted by Kit. There will be a mechanism by which our funds will flow into a trust fund for her. But her trust fund will be managed by you, if you say you’ll accept to do this.”

Diane swallowed, then returned Bette’s questioning look with a smile, and, clear-eyed, she nodded. Bette continued, “The card of my estate lawyer will also be in the file, and he has copies of everything, and will be able to explain many other things that we just can’t go over right now. The leather file will also have both a thumb drive as well as a paper that has all the current passwords to my Mac and to my files in a private cloud written on it. One of the most important folders in my Mac is the one titled “Art.” In that folder will be the latest version of our collection, which will be itemized, and each notation will include a note about where the art is currently located, its provenance, etc. When you can, call Marissa Wheeler. She’ll come over and will need to look at everything in that folder…” Bette paused when Diane exclaimed, “Marissa Wheeler?!”