Chương 3
“Concerned enough to arrange a psychiatric evaluation without telling me?”
“He’s a family physician.”
“He hasn’t treated me since I was twenty-two.”
“He knows your history.”
“My history of what?”
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
I took my handbag from the bed.
That frightened her more than anything I had said.
She stepped between me and the doorway.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You just got here.”
“Yes.”
“Fay, don’t be impulsive.”
The word landed exactly where she intended it to.
Impulsive.
Unstable.
Grieving.
Unable to make decisions.
I looked at the narrow space between her body and the doorframe.
Then I put the bag back down.
Her shoulders loosened.
“All right,” I said.
“I’ll stay tonight.”
Relief softened her face.
She touched my cheek.
“That’s sensible.”
I made myself smile.
For the first time in my life, my mother mistook obedience for surrender.
I waited until she left before locking the bedroom door.
Then I called James.
He answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“My parents’ house.”
“Are you alone?”
“In my old bedroom.”
“Can they hear you?”
“I don’t think so.”
He exhaled.
“Listen carefully, Fay.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Nathan changed the structure of his estate eleven months ago.”
“Why?”
“Because your father asked him for money.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“How much?”
“The first time?”
I closed my eyes.
“There was more than one?”
“Four requests that I know about.”
Downstairs, a cabinet door closed.
Then my father laughed at something my mother said.
James continued in the same controlled voice he had used beside Nathan’s grave.
“Your husband was worried they weren’t simply in financial trouble.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Nathan started looking at where Gerald’s money was going.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
I stopped breathing.
The doorknob moved once.
Then my mother’s voice came softly through the door.
“Fay?”
I stared at the handle.
James said my name through the phone.
My mother tried the knob again.
“Sweetheart, why did you lock the door?”
I lowered my voice.
“James, what did Nathan find?”
There was a pause.
When he answered, his voice had changed.
“He found payments from your father to Dr. Raymond Voss.”
For a second I could hear nothing except the blood beating behind my ears.
“How much money?”
“Not enough to prove anything by itself.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
James was quiet.
“Over three years, just under sixty thousand dollars.”
My mother knocked again.
“Fay, open the door.”
I stood and crossed to the window.
The backyard looked exactly as it had when I was a teenager, except the old swing set was gone and Gerald had replaced the vegetable garden with a square of decorative gravel that no one liked.
“What were the payments for?”
“That’s what Nathan was trying to determine.”
“Trying?”
“He didn’t finish.”
The word hurt in a different place than dead.
Dead was blunt.
Finish implied there had been something Nathan expected to return to.
“Did Voss work for Dad?”
“Not officially.”
“Consulting?”
“Nothing we could document.”
“Then why would my father pay his family doctor sixty thousand dollars?”
James did not answer immediately.
My mother’s voice came again through the door.
“Sweetheart, I’m making tea.”
I almost laughed.
“James.”
“I need you to leave that house.”
“You told me not to leave.”
“That was before you told me Voss was coming tomorrow.”
“I didn’t tell you that.”
“You just did.”
I closed my eyes.
Grief had made me slower than I wanted to admit.
“No, I mean you told me earlier not to leave.”
“I told you not to panic and disappear before we knew what they were doing.”
“Those are not the same words.”
“You’re right.”
His voice softened.
“I should have been clearer.”
I pressed my forehead to the cool glass.
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
He said it too quickly to be reassuring.
“Of them?”
“Of what frightened Nathan enough to restructure everything.”
Behind me, the doorknob turned again.
“Fay.”
My mother’s patience had thinned.
“I don’t like locked doors.”
That was almost funny.
She had said the same thing when I was sixteen and trying to change clothes without Chloe barging in.
I turned away from the window.
“I can’t walk downstairs and announce that I know.”
“No.”
“So what do I do?”
“Can you leave without them stopping you?”
I looked at the bedroom door.
“Physically?”
“Yes.”
“Probably.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“James, they’re my parents.”
“And parents can still make bad decisions.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
There was no triumph in his voice, which made it harder to resist him.
“I’m sending a car.”
“No.”
“Fay.”
“No strange car pulling into their driveway.”
“Then call a rideshare from the corner.”
“My car is outside.”
“Are your keys with you?”
I searched my bag.
Lip balm.
Wallet.
Nathan’s will.
A crushed packet of tissues.
No keys.
My stomach tightened.
“I left them downstairs.”
“Where?”
“The bowl by the front door.”
“Go get them.”
My mother knocked a third time.
I ended the call before she could hear his voice through the wood.
When I opened the door, Patricia stood there with two mugs balanced on a small tray.
“I was beginning to worry.”
“Bathroom.”
“You have one in the hall.”
“I know where the bathroom is.”
She studied my face.
I wondered what she saw.
Whatever it was, she stepped aside.
“I made chamomile.”
“I hate chamomile.”
“You used to drink it.”
“When I was twelve.”
“Well.”
She gave a small wounded smile.
“People change.”
I took the mug because refusing it would have become a conversation.
The liquid smelled faintly of apples.
I did not drink.
Downstairs, Gerald was sitting in the living room watching a baseball game with the sound low.
My keys were gone from the bowl.
I stopped beside the console table.
“Dad?”
He glanced over.
“Hmm?”
“Where are my keys?”
May you like
He looked toward the bowl, then at me.
“Your mother has them.”
