\u201cI can trust you, right, Mr. Latch?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course. I\u2019m your lawyer, duty bound to keep everything confidential.\u201d Simon noticed a slight flutter in his intestines, as if some truly wonderful and unexpected facts might be in the works. He\u2019d had a few surprises in the past eighteen years as a pseudo estate lawyer, but nothing significant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you see Mr. Latch \u2013\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease call me Simon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSimon, what a nice name. You see, Simon, Harry worked for almost forty years as a district sales rep for Coca-Cola. I think that\u2019s what killed him. He got his blood sugar up, had a stroke at sixty-nine, never recovered. We always had plenty of Coke, the real thing, not diet, in the fridge and he drank too many, at least in my opinion. Anyway, he qualified for stock options, a few at a time, and he bought every share of Coke he could get his hands on. Never sold a share, just enjoyed watching it pile up. And boy did it. Then about thirty years ago, he began selling Coke products to Wal-Mart and became fascinated with the company. It was selling a lot of soft drinks. Harry began buying stock in Wal-Mart and he never sold a share. When he died suddenly, he was wondering what to do with all that stock. He didn\u2019t want to leave it to his boys, because they were nothing but trouble. Still are. And here\u2019s the thing, Simon, the boys don\u2019t know about the stock. Harry never told them, never told anyone but me. He thought it was funny that we lived quietly in our modest little home and no one knew we were worth millions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reprinted with permission of Doubleday. Copyright 2025 by John Grisham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI can trust you, right, Mr. Latch?\u201d \u201cOf course. I\u2019m your lawyer, duty bound to keep everything confidential.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-504025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115383600730439787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}