Page 164 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

“At least take my card. If you change your mind, you can call me anytime.”
“I don’t talk to reporters,” I said. I took her card anyway.
A few weeks later, I fractured the fifth metatarsal of my left foot. For the next four months, I was a prisoner in my home, my foot elevated at all times as I sat on the couch.
I received a letter from Susanne Craig reiterating her belief that I had documents that could help “rewrite the history of the President of the United States,” as she put it. I ignored the letter. But she persisted.
After a month of sitting on the couch, scrolling through Twitter with the news constantly on in the background, I watched in real time as Donald shredded norms, endangered alliances, and trod upon the vulnerable. The only thing about it that surprised me was the increasing number of people willing to enable him.
As I watched our democracy disintegrating and people’s lives unraveling because of my uncle’s policies, I kept thinking about Susanne Craig’s letter. I found her business card and called her. I told her that I wanted to help but I no longer had any documents relating to our lawsuit years before.
“Jack Barnosky might still have them,” she said.
Ten days later I was on my way to his office.
The headquarters of Farrell Fritz was located in one of two oblong
buildings sheathed in blue glass. Bitterly cold air pushed between them across the wide-open space of the enormous parking lot. It’s impossible to park anywhere near the entrance, so after I found a spot, it took me ten minutes to get to the lobby on my crutches. I negotiated the escalator and the marble floors very carefully.
By the time I arrived at my destination, I was tired and overheated. Thirty banker’s boxes lined two walls and filled a bookshelf. The room’s only other contents were a desk and a chair. Jack’s secretary had kindly put out a pad of paper, a pen, and some paper clips. I dropped my bags, leaned my crutches against the wall, and half fell into the desk chair. None of the boxes was labeled; I had no idea where to start.
It took me about an hour to familiarize myself with the contents of the boxes and compile a list, which required wheeling around the room on my chair and lifting boxes onto the desk while standing on one leg. When Jack