Chương 5
Her face was dry now.
Composed.
Almost relieved.
The driver sped away.
Hart approached with two officers.
Vanessa looked past them directly at me.
“You want the truth?”
No one answered.
She smiled without warmth.
“Ask your brother what he was supposed to get after Thomas was declared incompetent.”
For a second, even the officers seemed to forget they were standing in a police parking lot.
Daniel said my name through the phone.
I lowered it from my ear without hanging up.
Hart stopped several feet from Vanessa.
“What was he supposed to get?”
Vanessa’s gaze stayed fixed on me.
“Ask him.”
“I’m asking you.”
“He knows.”
Daniel’s voice crackled from my phone.
“Claire, don’t listen to her.”
Vanessa heard him.
A strange little smile pulled at one corner of her mouth.
“There he is.”
Hart said, “Ms. Mercer, I need you to stay where you are.”
Vanessa lifted her hands higher.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You just attempted to leave.”
“I walked outside.”
“You got into a vehicle.”
“I changed my mind.”
Hart looked at one of the officers.
“Separate her.”
The officer motioned toward the station.
Vanessa did not move.
Instead she called toward my phone.
“Tell her about the lake house, Daniel.”
The silence on the line changed.
I knew immediately that whatever came next would hurt.
“What lake house?”
Daniel said nothing.
Vanessa finally let the officer guide her toward the entrance.
As she passed me, she murmured, “He was promised it.”
I watched the doors close behind her.
Then I lifted the phone again.
“Daniel.”
“I need to explain.”
“That usually means the answer is bad.”
“I never asked Dad for it.”
“For what?”
“The lake house.”
My father owned a small place two hours north, barely more than a cabin, built in the seventies and renovated badly by three generations of men who believed YouTube had made contractors obsolete.
Our mother had loved it.
After she died, Dad rarely went.
I did not know anyone had discussed transferring it.
“Who promised it to you?”
“Vanessa said Dad wanted me to have it.”
I leaned against the hood of my car.
“When?”
“A couple months ago.”
“Did Dad tell you that?”
“No.”
“Did you ask him?”
“No.”
I laughed once, quietly.
It was not amusement.
“Of course you didn’t.”
“Claire.”
“You signed a legal document without watching Dad sign it because Vanessa told you it was routine, and you believed Dad wanted to give you property because Vanessa told you that too.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds exactly like what you did.”
“I said I know.”
His voice broke on the last word.
I pressed my lips together.
A police cruiser rolled slowly through the lot, its headlights passing over me and disappearing.
Somewhere beyond the station, a freight truck changed gears on the highway.
My father was on his way to the hospital.
I should have been behind him.
Instead I was standing under a security light interrogating my brother while our sister-in-law was being escorted back into a police building.
That recognition steadied me.
“I’m leaving for the hospital.”
“Wait.”
“No.”
“There’s more.”
I closed my eyes.
“There’s always more after somebody says that.”
“She had me sign other things.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Daniel.”
“Three, maybe four.”
“What were they?”
“I didn’t read all of them.”
For a moment I could not speak.
My anger became so complete it stopped feeling hot.
“You didn’t read them.”
“She said they were drafts.”
“And you signed them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He breathed into the phone.
When he answered, his voice was small.
“Because I was tired of being the one who never knew what was happening.”
That answer irritated me because it was not entirely meaningless.
“What does that have to do with signing documents?”
“You and Dad have your own language.”
“We do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
I almost argued.
Then I pictured Sunday dinners.
Dad asking me about cases he knew I could not discuss.
Me asking about his investments because I understood the statements better than Daniel did.
Daniel arriving late, making some joke about the Mercer family audit committee, then disappearing into the kitchen with Vanessa.
I had heard the resentment.
I had treated it like background noise.
“That still doesn’t explain what you did.”
“I know.”
His voice hardened.
“Stop saying you know.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth would be a revolutionary start.”
“I thought if Dad trusted me with something important, maybe I’d stop feeling like the idiot.”
There it was.
Not greed exactly.
Something smaller and sadder that could still do enormous damage.
“So Vanessa gave you importance.”
“She made it sound like Dad was finally planning for me.”
“And the lake house?”
“She said he thought you didn’t want it.”
“Did you want it?”
He did not answer quickly enough.
“Yes,” I said.
“You did.”
“It’s not about the money.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Mom.”
That stopped me.
Daniel sniffed once.
“She taught me how to fish there.”
I looked down at the asphalt.
Mom had taught me too.
She had also sworn like a dockworker every time the line tangled.
The memory arrived with embarrassing clarity.
Her red windbreaker.
The dented green tackle box.
Daniel at fourteen pretending not to be cold.
“I thought Dad knew what it meant to me,” he said.
“Maybe he does.”
“Then why did Vanessa have to tell me?”
“Maybe because Dad never said it.”
“That’s my point.”
“No, your point is that you wanted something badly enough to stop asking inconvenient questions.”
He went quiet.
The truth of that sentence did not make me feel good.
Hart came through the doors again.
I held up one finger.
“I have to go.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“If Dad asks whether I knew Vanessa was going to hit him, tell him no.”
I stared through the glass toward the hallway where I could no longer see him.
May you like
“You tell him.”
“I don’t think he’ll talk to me.”
