House among the trees - Julia Glass

When the revered children's book author Mort Lear dies in an accident at his Connecticut home, he leaves his property and all its contents to his trusted assistant, Tomasina Daulair. Tommy had known Morty for more than four decades, since meeting him in a Manhattan playground when she was twelve and he was working on sketches for the book that would make him a star. By the end of his increasingly reclusive life, she found herself living in his house as confidante and helpmeet, witness not just to his daily routines but to the emotional fallout of his strange boyhood and his volatile relationship with a lover who died of AIDS. Now Tommy must try to honor Morty's last wishes while grappling with their effects on several people, including Nicholas Greene, the beguiling British actor cast to play Mort Lear in a movie. When Greene arrives for a visit, he and Tommy are compelled to look more closely at Morty's past, a process that undermines much of what Tommy believed she knew about her boss--and about herself.