Chương 7
“At first.”
“He started asking questions.”
“What questions?”
“Whether you had changed your will.”
Tobias and Evelyn both reacted.
Not dramatically.
Just a small change in stillness.
I noticed.
Penelope noticed me noticing.
“He asked whether you ever talked about what happened if you died.”
I sat down because suddenly standing seemed unnecessarily ambitious.
“And what did you tell him?”
“That you never talked about it with me.”
“True.”
“He asked whether Tobias inherited everything.”
Tobias’s mouth flattened.
“I told him I didn’t know.”
“What else?”
“He wanted to know whether your father left anything directly to me.”
The room remained very quiet.
“He knew he hadn’t,” I said.
Penelope’s eyes lifted.
“I thought so too.”
Evelyn closed the first-aid kit.
“Why did he ask?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have a guess.”
Penelope hesitated.
“After I told him I was keeping the baby, he became interested in whether the baby could inherit anything from the family.”
A pulse started behind my left eye.
“Your baby is not my heir.”
“I know.”
“Garrett knows that.”
“I’m not sure what Garrett knows anymore.”
Tobias asked, “Did he ever ask you to sign anything?”
Penelope’s face changed.
There it was.
A clue before the words.
“Penelope.”
She reached into Garrett’s sweatshirt and pulled out a folded envelope.
“I took this from his bag after the crash.”
Tobias accepted it carefully.
Inside were six pages.
He read the first, then passed them to Evelyn.
I watched Evelyn’s eyes move.
“What?”
She did not answer.
“Evelyn.”
“It’s a draft petition.”
“For what?”
“Emergency guardianship.”
I looked at Penelope.
“Over whom?”
“Your unborn child,” Evelyn said.
For several seconds, nobody corrected her.
Then Penelope whispered, “My child.”
Evelyn nodded.
“Your child.”
Tobias took the pages back.
“Garrett is listed as the presumed father.”
“He is the father.”
“Maybe.”
Penelope went pale.
I stared at my brother.
“What do you mean, maybe?”
Tobias pointed to the attached exhibits.
“This filing claims Garrett and Penelope were legally married in South Carolina four months ago.”
I looked at Penelope.
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
“You married him?”
“No.”
The word was immediate.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why is there a marriage certificate?”
“I don’t know.”
Evelyn took the page.
“Because it’s probably false.”
Penelope stood too quickly and grabbed the table.
“He told me he was going to leave Rosalind.”
The sentence came out small and pathetic.
I almost pitied her.
Almost.
“He told me he needed time.”
I looked away.
There were certain humiliations I did not want described in detail.
Garrett had apparently recycled promises like grocery bags.
Tobias kept reading.
“This gets worse.”
“Of course it does.”
“The petition says Rosalind has a history of cognitive impairment and substance misuse.”
I laughed once.
“Substance misuse.”
“The laboratory results.”
Evelyn understood before I did.
“He wasn’t only sedating her.”
Tobias nodded.
“He was building a record.”
My skin went cold.
“The headaches.”
“The missed meetings,” Tobias said.
“The time you got confused driving home.”
“I was exhausted.”
“I know.”
“No.”
I hit the table with my palm.
“I was poisoned.”
Nobody corrected me.
Penelope looked sick.
“What did he give her?”
“We’re still determining that,” Evelyn said.
Penelope turned toward me.
“I didn’t know.”
I stood.
“Do not ask me to believe you yet.”
“I’m not.”
“You came here for something.”
Her face tightened.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Protection.”
“From Garrett?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he hurt you?”
She looked at Tobias.
Then Evelyn.
Finally me.
“Because when the divers started preparing to go down, Garrett called someone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he say?”
“He walked away from the deputies, but I followed him.”
Her fingers shook now.
“He said, ‘There’s a problem with the rear door.’”
Tobias’s eyes narrowed.
“What else?”
“He said, ‘If either of them comes up alive, do not let them reach Baltimore.’”
A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with wet clothes.
Penelope took a breath.
“Then the person on the other end said something I couldn’t hear.”
She pressed her lips together.
“And Garrett said, ‘My father handled the parents, and I’m handling the children.’”
Tobias went completely still.
Evelyn’s face lost color.
I heard the refrigerator humming behind us.
Somewhere in the house, a pipe clicked.
I thought of our father’s hands gripping a steering wheel fifteen years ago.
Our mother beside him.
Tobias bleeding in the back seat.
Garrett’s father standing near the maintenance yard the previous night.
“Did you record that call?”
Evelyn asked.
Penelope nodded.
“For about twenty seconds.”
“With the phone you threw in the river?”
“No.”
For the first time since entering the house, Penelope looked almost ashamed of being prepared.
“I had a second phone.”
She reached into the waistband of her leggings.
The device was wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag.
Tobias stared at it.
“Why do you have a second phone?”
Penelope looked at me.
“Because Garrett wasn’t the only person in our family having an affair.”
Penelope kept the second phone in her palm as if it might burn through the plastic.
For a moment, nobody seemed interested in the affair.
We were all still caught on the word family.
Tobias broke first.
“Whose affair?”
Penelope stared at the floor.
“Mine.”
I almost laughed.
“You were already sleeping with my husband.”
“I know what affair means, Rosalind.”
“Apparently I don’t.”
She flinched.
Good.
I wanted her to.
Then I hated myself for wanting it.
Tobias held out his hand.
“Phone.”
Penelope gave it to him.
“It’s locked.”
“Code?”
She hesitated.
“0714.”
He entered it.
I looked at her.
“July fourteenth?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
She gave me a tired look.
“My mother’s birthday.”
I had forgotten.
That hurt in a quieter place.
Tobias opened the recordings app.
There were eleven files.
The newest had been created less than two hours earlier.
He tapped it.
Garrett’s voice emerged beneath wind noise and distant sirens.
“There’s a problem with the rear door.”
May you like
A man answered, too faintly to understand.
Garrett spoke again.
