Chương 5
Emily’s fingers tightened around the blanket.
“I yelled for Rosa.”
“Why Rosa?”
“Because she was the only person in that house who had ever asked me if I was okay and waited for an answer.”
I looked down.
There are sentences a father remembers forever.
That became one of mine.
“Rosa came into the room,” Emily said.
“Margaret told her to go back to the kitchen.”
“Did she?”
“For a second.”
Emily’s eyes filled.
“She looked at me, then she went.”
Lena said, “That may have been fear.”
“I know.”
Emily wiped beneath one eye.
“I hated her for maybe ten seconds.”
“That’s allowed.”
“I know.”
“Then what?”
“Grant told me to sign.”
“I told him I would rather burn the company down.”
Lena lifted an eyebrow.
Emily gave her a tired look.
“I was angry.”
“Understandably.”
“That was when Richard moved.”
“Toward you?”
“Toward Grant.”
“What did he do?”
“He grabbed Grant’s shoulder.”
Emily hesitated.
“And he whispered something.”
“What?”
“I couldn’t hear all of it.”
Lena leaned closer.
“What could you hear?”
Emily stared at the blanket.
“Something about Carol.”
The room seemed to contract.
I stepped away from the window.
“What about her?”
“I don’t know.”
“What words?”
“Dad, I don’t know.”
“Try.”
Emily’s voice rose.
“I said I don’t know.”
I stopped.
Lena looked between us.
“Anything at all?”
Emily closed her eyes.
“Richard said, ‘We already made that mistake with Carol.’”
No one moved.
My chair sat empty beside the bed.
The television showed another smiling couple choosing paint colors.
I stared at Emily until her face blurred.
“Are you sure?”
She opened her eyes.
“Yes.”
Lena’s voice was careful.
“Could he have said something similar?”
“No.”
Emily shook her head.
“I heard Carol clearly.”
I sat down again.
The coffee Lena had given me was still somewhere outside the room, probably cold by now.
Carol had been dead six years.
Cancer had killed her.
There had been pathology reports, scans, chemotherapy, hospice nurses, all the ugly documentation of a body failing in plain view.
There was no mystery about her death.
But Richard Whitmore had just placed her name inside a sentence that did not belong there.
Lena closed the folder.
“We’re going to need to find out what mistake he meant.”
Emily looked at me.
I wanted to tell her it was probably nothing.
I wanted to tell myself the same thing.
Instead, I asked the question I had been avoiding since she mentioned the trust.
“Did your mother ever know Richard Whitmore before you married Grant?”
Emily’s face went pale.
“I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
She stared at me as if the answer had been sitting between us for years.
“Mom worked for him.”
I stared at Emily until the words lost their shape and became only sound.
“Worked for him how?”
“She was his controller.”
“No.”
Emily’s brow tightened.
“She told me herself.”
“Your mother was a school principal.”
“Later.”
I shook my head.
“She taught elementary school before administration.”
“I know what Mom did when I was growing up.”
“So do I.”
The sharpness in my voice made Lena glance at me.
Emily let the blanket fall from her fingers.
“Before I was born, Dad.”
I sat back.
“That would have been before we met.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Almost four years.”
“Who told you to ask her about it?”
“Grant.”
Of course it was Grant.
I stood again, slower this time, and crossed to the sink because I needed to do something with my hands.
A plastic cup sat upside down beside the faucet.
I turned it over, then turned it back.
“When did he tell you?”
“About two years ago.”
“And you asked your mother?”
Emily’s expression shifted.
“No.”
The room became quiet enough that I could hear the rubber wheels of a medication cart passing outside.
“You said she told you herself.”
“She did.”
“When?”
Emily looked confused.
“Years ago.”
“Your mother died six years ago.”
“I know.”
“Then Grant didn’t tell you first.”
“No.”
She pressed two fingers against her temple.
“Sorry.”
Dr. Patel had warned us about concussion symptoms.
Lena noticed the stumble too.
She softened immediately.
“Don’t push.”
Emily shook her head.
“No, I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be fine.”
“I hate when people say that.”
“So do I.”
Lena leaned back.
“Take it slowly.”
Emily closed her eyes for several seconds.
“Mom told me when I got engaged.”
The date settled into place.
Seven years earlier.
Carol had already been sick, though we had not yet known how sick.
“She told you she worked for Richard?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Emily opened her eyes.
“I assumed she had.”
I almost said she would have.
The certainty reached my tongue and died there.
Marriage contains whole continents two people never visit together.
That was something I had learned after Carol’s funeral, when I found a shoebox of letters from a cousin I had never heard of and three unpaid parking tickets she had hidden because I became insufferable about municipal fines.
People could love you and still keep drawers closed.
“What exactly did she tell you?” Lena asked.
Emily drew a breath.
“She said she used to work for Whitmore Development when it was much smaller.”
“Doing accounting?”
“She said bookkeeping at first, then financial controls.”
“That was before Richard expanded into commercial property,” I said.
Emily looked at me.
“You knew the company that far back?”
“Everyone around Raleigh knew Whitmore by the nineties.”
Lena’s eyes stayed on me.
“Did you ever investigate them?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
She heard it.
“So there’s an asterisk.”
“There was an inquiry.”
“What kind?”
“Bid coordination.”
“When?”
“Twenty-eight years ago.”
Emily stared at me.
“You investigated Grant’s father?”
“I didn’t investigate him.”
I hated how defensive that sounded.
“Our unit opened a preliminary review involving several contractors.”
“Was Whitmore one of them?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Nothing prosecutable developed.”
Lena folded her arms.
“You were assigned?”
May you like
“For three weeks.”
“What happened after three weeks?”
