Chương 10
“I hate Grandma too.”
“I know.”
“I miss her more.”
Sophie put the towel aside.
Lucy’s eyes filled.
“It’s stupid.”
“No.”
“It is.”
“No.”
“She helped him hurt you.”
“Yes.”
“So why do I want her?”
Sophie moved slowly, giving Lucy time to pull away.
She did not.
Sophie sat beside her on the floor.
“Because she’s your grandmother.”
Lucy wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“That’s not a reason.”
“It is.”
Lucy leaned against Sophie.
After a moment she said, “Can I call her?”
Sophie closed her eyes.
Every part of her wanted to say no.
Protecting Lucy felt like the cleanest justification in the world.
But protection could become control so easily.
Grant had taught her that too.
“Yes,” Sophie said. “If your therapist thinks it can be done safely.”
Lucy nodded against her shoulder.
The supervised call lasted eleven minutes.
Sophie did not listen.
She sat in the therapist’s waiting room staring at a fish tank.
There were six fish.
One kept trying to swim behind the filter.
The waiting room smelled faintly of crayons and disinfectant.
A magazine on the table featured a celebrity Sophie did not recognize.
She read the same paragraph three times.
When Lucy came out, her face was dry.
Sophie stood.
“How was it?”
Lucy shrugged.
They walked to the car.
Inside, Sophie waited.
Lucy fastened her seat belt.
“Grandma cried.”
Sophie gripped the steering wheel.
“What did she say?”
“She said she should’ve stopped Dad before you got there.”
Sophie looked straight ahead.
“Did you ask if she knew?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she knew he wanted to scare you.”
“And?”
Lucy picked at the cuff of her sleeve.
“She said she didn’t know he wanted you dead.”
Sophie nodded.
“Do you believe her?”
Lucy took a long time.
“Not all the way.”
Sophie started the car.
After two blocks, Lucy said, “She asked me to forgive her.”
Sophie’s hands tightened.
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
Sophie looked at her.
Lucy was watching traffic through the window.
“Then she said someday.”
“What did you say?”
“I said maybe.”
Sophie turned back to the road.
A bus merged in front of them.
Someone honked.
Nothing important happened for several seconds.
Then Lucy said, “Are you mad?”
“At you?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Would you forgive her?”
Sophie stopped at a red light.
“I don’t know.”
“That means no.”
“Right now, yes.”
Lucy nodded.
The light changed.
They drove home.
Margaret testified before trial.
Her cooperation did not transform her into a sympathetic figure.
Prosecutors charged her in connection with the financial conspiracy and the coercion plan surrounding the elevator. The exact legal structure became a subject for attorneys, not newspaper headlines, which preferred simpler descriptions.
MATRIARCH TURNS ON SON.
HALE FAMILY FRAUD CASE DEEPENS.
WIFE SURVIVES PENTHOUSE ELEVATOR PLOT.
Sophie stopped reading coverage after seeing one article describe her as “the heiress accountant.”
She found the phrase insulting in three different ways.
Caroline printed it on a mug for Christmas.
Sophie nearly threw the mug away.
Then she started using it.
By January, Grant’s attorneys were discussing a plea.
Sophie had spent months preparing to testify.
The possibility that she might not created an emotion she could not identify.
Relief, certainly.
Also disappointment.
Also anger at herself for disappointment.
She had imagined sitting in a courtroom and forcing Grant to hear the sequence of what he had done.
The forged signatures.
The work order.
The maintenance diagram.
The removed emergency key.
The lever.
The fall.
Lucy.
A plea would reduce all that to negotiated language.
Naomi came to Sophie’s office one afternoon with the proposed terms.
Sophie had returned to work part-time in November.
Her first week back, she discovered the almond was still beneath the keyboard.
She removed it with tweezers.
No one understood why she started laughing.
Now Naomi sat across from the desk while Sophie read the pages.
Grant would plead guilty to multiple federal offenses related to financial fraud and obstruction, plus a charge arising from the attack that carried substantial prison exposure. State charges would be resolved in coordination.
The exact sentence would be decided later.
Margaret’s case would proceed separately, with her cooperation considered.
Sophie read every line.
Then again.
“He doesn’t have to say attempted murder.”
Naomi watched her.
“He admits intentionally activating the release while you were inside as part of an effort to prevent and retaliate against your cooperation.”
“That is lawyer language.”
“Yes.”
“He said I would die.”
“The recording still exists.”
“He told me my daughter would inherit.”
“The recording still exists.”
“He tried to kill me.”
“Yes.”
Sophie pushed the pages away.
“Then why won’t he say it?”
“Because pleas are negotiations.”
“I know what they are.”
“You asked.”
“I asked emotionally.”
“I answered professionally.”
Sophie stood and walked to the window.
Her office overlooked a narrow avenue where delivery trucks routinely blocked traffic.
A cyclist shouted at a driver.
Someone outside was selling coffee from a cart despite freezing wind.
Sophie watched steam rise from the metal urn.
“What happens if I oppose it?”
“Prosecutors consider your position. They are not bound by it.”
“And if I insist on trial?”
“You cannot insist.”
“I know.”
“Sophie.”
She turned.
Naomi had removed the top piece of bread from a sandwich she had brought, though it was only three in the afternoon.
“How long do you want Grant to remain the main event in your life?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No.”
“I’m allowed to want him to admit it.”
“Yes.”
“I’m allowed to want a jury to hear it.”
“Yes.”
“I’m allowed to want Lucy to see that someone officially understood.”
“Yes.”
Sophie looked at her.
“But?”
“No but.”
Naomi folded the bread.
“Those things are allowed. They are not all guaranteed.”
Sophie sat again.
“What would you do?”
“I don’t answer that.”
May you like
“Of course you don’t.”
“I will say this. Trial does not give people the emotional moment they imagine. Sometimes it gives them something useful. Sometimes it gives them three weeks of listening to strangers argue about whether their memory is reliable.”
