Chương 9
Cowardice usually was.
“What did Vanessa say you would get?”
“The lake house and part of the investment account.”
“In exchange for what?”
“She never said it like that.”
“Of course she didn’t.”
“She said if I helped make sure the paperwork was organized, Dad would finally see I could handle responsibility.”
I closed my eyes.
There was something almost cruelly efficient about it.
She had turned Daniel’s oldest insecurity into free labor.
“Did she ever ask you to sign Dad’s name?”
“No.”
“Did she ask you to lie to anyone?”
Daniel hesitated.
My stomach dropped.
“To whom?”
“A bank employee.”
“What did you say?”
“That Dad had authorized Vanessa to discuss his accounts.”
“Had he?”
“I thought he had.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
The answer barely made a sound.
“What bank?”
“I’ll tell Hart.”
“Good.”
“I’m not hiding it.”
“You already did.”
He breathed in sharply.
Then he said, “I deserve that.”
I picked up the coffees.
“No, you deserve accuracy.”
“That sounds like something you say before ruining someone’s life.”
“I’m not ruining your life, Daniel.”
I started back toward the bay.
“You made choices.”
He was silent.
Then he asked, “How’s Dad?”
“Two fractured ribs.”
Daniel stopped breathing.
I heard it.
“Claire.”
“His arm isn’t broken.”
“Oh God.”
“You can tell him yourself when he wants to hear it.”
The words were harsher than necessary.
Daniel whispered, “Okay.”
I ended the call before I could make them worse.
When I returned, Dr. Moreno was leaving the bay.
Dad was sitting slightly elevated, holding a plastic breathing device and looking insulted by it.
“They want me to suck air through this toy.”
“You inhale.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you said suck.”
He gave me a tired look.
“Federal agents must be delightful at parties.”
“We are extensively trained in correcting respiratory vocabulary.”
I handed him the decaf.
He smelled it.
“This is terrible.”
“It cost three dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“Then it’s expensive and terrible.”
I sat beside him.
For a minute neither of us spoke.
Then Dad said, “Daniel knew something.”
I looked at him.
He stared into the coffee.
“He didn’t know about the bat.”
“I believe that.”
Dad nodded slowly.
“But he knew something was wrong.”
I did not answer.
“He kept asking me to sign things.”
That changed everything.
“What things?”
“Account forms.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
“Did you sign them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dad rubbed his thumb against the cup seam.
“Because my name was spelled wrong.”
I stared at him.
He gave a faint, humorless smile.
“Mentally unstable, but apparently still good enough to notice an extra E in Mercer.”
I set my coffee down.
“What happened after you refused?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“Vanessa stopped asking.”
A pulse started in my temple.
“And tonight?”
Dad looked toward the closed curtain.
“She brought different papers.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t know.”
“She wanted you to sign them?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say they were?”
He swallowed.
“Documents to protect the house.”
“From what?”
“From you.”
I went very still.
Dad’s fingers tightened around the paper cup.
“She told me you were planning to have me declared incompetent.”
For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood him.
“From me?”
Dad nodded.
The paper cup trembled slightly in his hand.
“She said you had already spoken to a lawyer.”
“Which lawyer?”
“She didn’t say.”
“And you believed her?”
His eyes moved away from mine.
“Not exactly.”
That answer hurt more than yes would have.
“What does not exactly mean?”
“It means I wondered.”
I sat back.
The plastic chair creaked beneath me.
“What did she tell you?”
“That you were worried I was making bad decisions.”
“Dad.”
“I know.”
“No, I need the words.”
He rubbed his forehead with two fingers.
“She said you thought I shouldn’t be living alone anymore.”
I stared at him.
“She said you’d asked about selling the house.”
“I never said that.”
“I know that now.”
“You know it now?”
He looked at me then.
There was embarrassment in his face.
And something else.
Guilt.
“She knew things.”
“What things?”
“Things you and I had talked about.”
My stomach tightened.
“What things?”
“The roof.”
I frowned.
Dad’s roof had leaked twice the previous winter.
I had suggested getting estimates before another storm season.
“That wasn’t secret.”
“She knew you thought I should replace the stairs to the basement.”
“You nearly fell on them.”
“She knew you asked whether I wanted to update my will.”
I stopped.
That conversation had happened in his kitchen.
Just the two of us.
My father saw the question in my face.
“I told Daniel.”
“When?”
“A while ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want him hearing it later and thinking you had put the idea in my head.”
That was so specifically Daniel that I almost smiled.
Almost.
“What else?”
Dad looked toward the curtain again.
“She said you had asked whether I’d consider moving somewhere smaller.”
I remembered saying it.
Not assisted living.
Not a facility.
A condo.
Something with fewer stairs and no yard for him to curse at.
I had made the suggestion after finding him on a ladder cleaning gutters by himself.
“You told Daniel that too?”
“I might have.”
“Might have?”
“I talk to my son, Claire.”
The irritation in his voice was familiar.
It was also deserved.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
He breathed out slowly.
“Vanessa took normal things and made them sound different.”
“Yes.”
“And Daniel must have told her more than I thought.”
“Probably.”
Dad looked down at his coffee.
“He tells her everything.”
“So do most husbands.”
“I know.”
He sounded tired.
The anger drained out of me by degrees.
Not because the situation was less serious.
Because the architecture of it was becoming painfully ordinary.
Vanessa had not needed microphones or hacked accounts.
May you like
She had needed a husband with resentment and a father who wanted peace.
She had taken family conversations, stripped away their context, and fed them back to each side in the version most likely to hurt.
