Chương 5
I showed Renee.
“Don’t respond yet,” she said.
A third message appeared.
Mercer was supposed to fix this, not marry you.
My pulse jumped.
I read it twice.
Then another.
Your father changed the deal.
I looked at Renee.
“What deal?”
She didn’t answer because there was no way she could.
Daniel called again.
The phone vibrated against my palm.
I pressed decline.
A voicemail notification appeared almost immediately.
Renee said, “You can choose whether to listen.”
I tapped it.
Daniel’s voice filled the small room.
“Claire, your dad used the company as collateral on loans he couldn’t cover, and your trust is tied into part of it.”
He stopped for a breath.
“I signed papers because he said Mercer was buying the house temporarily to keep creditors from reaching it.”
Another pause.
“I know how that sounds.”
His voice dropped.
“I didn’t know about the marriage until this morning.”
The recording continued.
“When I found out, I tried to stop it, and Richard told me he’d report what I did with the deed unless I helped convince you.”
I felt nothing for a moment.
Then too many things arrived together.
“So he admits the deed.”
Renee held up one hand.
“He admits signing papers and participating in something involving the deed.”
“He knew my signature was there.”
“We don’t know yet exactly what he knew when he signed.”
“You sound like his lawyer.”
“No.”
Her expression stayed steady.
“I sound like someone who doesn’t want you building your next decision on an assumption.”
I looked away.
A hospital cart squeaked down the corridor.
Somebody laughed near the nurses’ station.
A child complained loudly that orange gelatin was disgusting.
The normal sounds offended me.
The world had apparently decided not to stop while my marriage decomposed.
Dr. Patel asked if I wanted a few minutes.
“No.”
My voice surprised me.
“I want to know what happened last night.”
Renee glanced at her notes.
“Then start with what you remember before you fell.”
I closed my eyes.
The parking garage returned in fragments.
My laptop bag.
The concrete ramp.
Rainwater blown beneath the open side of the structure.
My phone ringing.
Dad’s name on the screen.
I had declined the call.
Then a message from him.
Call me now.
Mercer knows.
At the time, I had assumed it concerned the company.
Dad had been pressuring me for months to sign documents related to my trust, insisting it was routine estate restructuring.
I kept refusing because the language gave him more control over assets my grandmother had left directly to me.
That argument had become so familiar I barely read his texts anymore.
But there had been another message.
One I had forgotten.
I opened my phone and searched Dad’s thread.
The message was gone.
Not just the one from last night.
Months of our conversation had disappeared.
“My messages with my father were deleted.”
Renee stood.
“When did you last see them?”
“Yesterday.”
“Could you have deleted them accidentally?”
“No.”
My hands began to shake again.
Daniel knew my passcode.
Mom had possessed my phone.
Dad had wanted access to my trust.
And somewhere between the parking garage and this bed, somebody had decided that taking my house was not enough.
I opened the recently deleted message folder.
There were twenty-six texts waiting to be recovered.
Most were advertisements and authentication codes.
One was from Dad.
It had been deleted at 10:06 that morning.
I restored it.
The message returned to the thread.
Call me now.
Mercer knows you never signed the trust amendment.
Beneath it was another message from the night before, one I had never opened.
Do not talk to Daniel until I explain what he did.
For a moment, the message made Daniel look like the victim again.
I hated that my mind still knew how to do that.
It gathered every version of him I had loved and tried to place them between me and what he had done.
Daniel bringing me soup when I had the flu.
Daniel sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor while I took the pregnancy test.
Daniel crying before I did when the second line appeared.
Daniel tying fabric around my injured ankle because I would not obey him.
All of those men occupied the same body.
“Can we recover when these messages were deleted?” I asked.
Renee nodded toward my phone.
“Possibly through the device, your carrier, backups, or later forensic work, but don’t start experimenting with it yourself.”
“I’m not experimenting.”
“You’re angry.”
“Yes.”
“Angry people press buttons.”
That was annoyingly fair.
Dr. Patel stepped toward the door.
“I’m going to have obstetrics come speak with you and reassess the bleeding from your ankle.”
“Is the baby okay?”
“The ultrasound was reassuring, but I want someone from obstetrics to answer pregnancy-specific questions.”
She hesitated.
“And I want your pain medication reviewed before anything else is given.”
“Thank you.”
When she left, Renee asked whether my father had access to my trust documents.
“He used to manage everything.”
“Used to?”
“My grandmother left me assets when she died.”
I rubbed my thumb over the edge of the phone.
“She didn’t trust Dad with all of it.”
“Why?”
“She liked him.”
Renee waited.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“No.”
I looked toward the covered window.
“My grandmother believed liking someone and trusting them were separate decisions.”
It was the kind of sentence she would have enjoyed hearing repeated.
Eleanor Shaw had been difficult, vain, generous when it suited her, and capable of remembering a slight for thirty years.
She also kept every financial statement in labeled binders and once fired an accountant for calling her “young lady.”
When she died four years earlier, she left Dad a controlling interest in the family manufacturing company and left me a portfolio, two commercial properties, and a trust containing shares that could not be transferred without my consent.
May you like
At the time, Dad called the arrangement sentimental nonsense.
Three months later, he began asking me to simplify it.
