Chương 6
The project looked less like an investment the longer I read.
It looked like a fight Julian had chosen.
That made me angrier.
He had chosen it without telling me how much of our money he had put at risk.
The next morning, my mother appeared at my office.
I saw her through the glass front doors while I was signing insurance forms at reception.
For a second, I thought grief had invented her.
Then she walked in wearing a beige coat and carrying her expensive leather purse against her ribs.
The receptionist looked at me.
“Do you want me to—”
“No.”
Mom stopped six feet away.
Her face changed when she saw me.
I had lost weight.
I knew that because my wedding ring had started slipping on my finger.
“Oh, Sienna.”
“Don’t.”
She pressed her lips together.
“I just want to talk.”
“I’m working.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
Her eyes flicked toward the receptionist.
“Can we do this somewhere private?”
“No.”
“Sienna.”
“No.”
The receptionist abruptly became fascinated by the copier.
Mom lowered her voice.
“We saw the article.”
I stared at her.
“What article?”
She pulled out her phone.
The Richmond Ledger had published Dana Brooks’s piece that morning.
The headline read WIDOW’S VOTE COULD DECIDE FATE OF $86 MILLION MARSHALL STREET SALE.
My name appeared in the second paragraph.
Julian’s ownership share appeared in the fourth.
The article did not say exactly how much money I might receive, but anyone capable of basic arithmetic could estimate it.
I looked at my mother.
“You came because of this?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Then why now?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for months.”
“You mailed me three letters.”
“And called.”
“From Dad’s office after I blocked you.”
Her cheeks colored.
“I didn’t know how else to reach you.”
“You could have come to the funeral.”
She looked down.
The silence stretched.
A patient entered behind her and quietly gave us space.
“I know you’re angry.”
I felt something cold move through me.
“Is that what you call it?”
“What do you want me to call it?”
“I don’t care.”
“Sienna, your father and I made a mistake.”
“You made a reservation.”
“That’s cruel.”
I almost admired the sentence.
Some part of her still believed cruelty was what happened when pain reached her.
“You missed three funerals.”
“It wasn’t three funerals.”
The words escaped her too quickly.
She knew it immediately.
Her eyes widened.
I stared at her.
“What?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?”
“It was one service.”
Behind the desk, the receptionist stopped pretending to copy anything.
My mother’s fingers tightened around her purse.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should leave.”
“Sienna, please.”
“Leave.”
She did.
Not because she understood.
Because people were watching.
That afternoon, the article spread.
By five, my voicemail was full.
Most calls were from people I did not know.
A neighborhood association wanted to speak with me.
Bellweather Urban Partners wanted to schedule a meeting.
Graham Wells left a message saying we needed to discuss “responsible stewardship.”
A housing nonprofit sent an email thanking me for considering the future of longtime residents, although I had not said I was considering anything.
One man left a voicemail calling me a greedy parasite before I had even decided whether to sell.
At home, I sat on the couch and listened to Julian’s old voicemail greeting because I had still not canceled his number.
“You’ve reached Julian.”
A pause.
“If this is Sienna, I did whatever you’re calling about and I’m sorry.”
I listened three times.
Then I called Thomas.
“I need to see the project files.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“That’s a lot.”
“I inherited twenty-eight percent of a mess.”
“Yes.”
“So I want twenty-eight percent worth of explanations.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Julian would be terrified of you right now.”
“Good.”
Thomas gave me access to a cloud folder that night.
There were contracts, financial models, environmental reports, architectural plans, lender correspondence, meeting minutes, and years of email threads.
I understood perhaps a third of it.
By one in the morning, I had developed a headache behind my right eye.
I was about to shut the laptop when I noticed a folder labeled COMMUNITY COMMITMENTS.
Inside were scanned agreements from meetings held two years earlier.
Several were signed by Julian.
One promised that at least forty percent of the residential units would remain below market rate for a defined affordability period.
Another outlined job-training commitments with two neighborhood organizations.
A third document contained handwritten notes in Julian’s slanted block printing.
Don’t let Graham turn this into another polished graveyard.
Below that, he had written three names.
One was Graham Wells.
One was a city planning consultant.
The third was Eleanor Mercer.
I stared at my sister’s married name until the letters stopped looking like language.
Eleanor had never mentioned Marshall Street.
As far as I knew, she had never met Julian’s partners.
I opened the document properties.
It had been scanned fourteen months before the accident.
Then I searched the project folder for her name.
Twenty-seven results appeared.
Most were buried in consultant invoices and email chains.
Eleanor’s public-relations firm had been hired by Bellweather almost a year earlier.
She had advised them on “stakeholder messaging” related to the Marshall Street acquisition.
My hands went cold.
I opened another email.
Then another.
In one exchange, Eleanor suggested that Bellweather avoid approaching Julian directly because he was “emotionally attached to the affordable component and unlikely to respond well to financial framing.”
Another message discussed waiting for “ownership conditions to become more favorable.”
The date was six weeks before the accident.
I read that line five times.
There was nothing sinister in it.
Nothing criminal.
Nothing that suggested anyone had expected Julian to die.
It was business language.
Ugly, bloodless business language.
Still, my sister had known.
May you like
She had known Julian was resisting a deal worth millions.
She had known his death changed the ownership conditions.
