Chương 4
“What things?”
“He didn't list them.”
“When?”
“About a week before he died.”
Susan walked away from them.
She stopped near the front steps with her back turned.
Emily looked at Robert.
“A week.”
Robert nodded.
Emily understood something then.
Not everything.
Just one terrible piece.
Susan's first sentence returned to her.
Her father died protecting what the key opened.
She looked at her mother's back.
“What happened the night Dad died?”
Susan didn't move.
“Mom.”
“We have done this.”
“No. You told me he was driving home.”
“He was.”
“From where?”
Silence.
Robert looked at Margaret.
Margaret looked frightened.
Emily's voice fell.
“Where was he driving home from?”
Susan turned around.
“Your grandfather's.”
Robert's face changed.
Emily looked at him.
“He came to you?”
“Yes.”
“The night he died?”
“Yes.”
“And nobody ever told me that?”
Susan came back toward them.
“Because it didn't matter.”
“It matters now.”
“No. It doesn't.”
“What was he doing there?”
Robert rubbed his jaw.
“He brought the car.”
Emily looked at the yellow vehicle beside them.
“This car?”
“Yes.”
The driveway seemed to tilt.
Robert continued.
“He had already stopped driving most days. He shouldn't have driven that night. The weather was bad.”
Susan's voice sharpened.
“Don't.”
Robert ignored her.
“He asked me to store it.”
“And the box?”
“I didn't know about the box.”
“Did he give you the keys?”
“The fob. Not the silver key.”
Emily looked down at the steel case.
“Then how did it get back to Mom?”
“He had another set.”
Susan said, “Enough.”
Emily turned on her.
“What happened?”
Susan's face twisted, but her voice remained controlled.
“We argued.”
“About this?”
“About everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your father was dying and still trying to control what happened after he was gone.”
Robert muttered, “He was trying to protect his daughter.”
Susan snapped, “And I was trying to keep him alive.”
No one answered that.
Susan's breathing had become shallow.
She looked at Emily.
“He had spent weeks moving things. Changing accounts. Talking to lawyers. Leaving instructions. He treated me like I was going to wake up the day after his funeral and rob you.”
Emily glanced at the balance sheet.
Susan saw.
“Yes,” she said. “I know how it looks.”
“How should it look?”
“Like a widow who found out after twenty-seven years of marriage that her husband trusted paper more than he trusted her.”
Emily felt the anger in that sentence because it wasn't new.
Susan had been carrying it for years.
“What did you argue about that night?”
“The car. The papers. The trust. You.”
“Me?”
“He wanted to tell you everything.”
“Why didn't he?”
“Because I asked him not to.”
Emily stared.
Susan's eyes shone.
“You were twenty-two. He was dying. You were barely sleeping. You were taking every class you could so you could graduate before—”
“Before he died.”
Susan nodded.
“You sat beside his bed doing homework. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“He watched you pretend you weren't terrified. And then he wanted to sit you down and explain accounts and trustees and what would happen when he was gone. I said no.”
“You decided.”
“Yes.”
The answer came with no defense.
Emily almost preferred the excuses.
Susan looked toward the road.
“He said I was confusing protecting you with controlling you.”
Robert looked down.
Susan gave a brittle smile.
“He had become very fond of sentences like that.”
“What happened after the argument?”
“He drove here.”
“And then?”
“He left.”
Robert said, “I tried to stop him.”
Susan closed her eyes.
“He was heading back home.”
Emily knew the rest.
Black ice.
A guardrail.
A truck coming the other direction.
The state police officer at the hospital speaking carefully.
Her mother's hand inside hers.
Her father surviving for six hours and never waking up.
Cancer had been killing him slowly.
A road had finished the job.
Emily pressed one hand against the car.
Susan opened her eyes.
“That is what I meant,” she said quietly. “He died protecting what that box represents. Not because someone killed him for it. Not because there's some ridiculous conspiracy. He died after an argument about this. He drove when he shouldn't have because he was angry with me and determined to put things where I couldn't reach them.”
Robert said, “That is not all on you.”
Susan looked at him.
“I know.”
But she didn't sound as if she believed it.
For the first time, Emily saw something besides fear in her mother.
Guilt.
Old guilt.
The kind that had already found every possible place to live.
It did not make Emily trust her.
It only made the betrayal harder to simplify.
Emily closed the steel case.
“I need time.”
Susan's body loosened slightly.
“Okay.”
“I am taking this with me.”
The looseness disappeared.
“Where?”
“My apartment.”
“No.”
Emily stared at her.
Susan stopped herself.
Then tried again.
“I don't think you should make decisions while you're upset.”
“I'm not making any.”
“You'll call somebody.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don't know yet.”
Susan looked at the documents as if they were a living thing being carried away.
“Your father had an attorney.”
“There are names in here?”
Susan hesitated.
“Yes.”
Emily lifted the case.
It was heavier than she expected.
Robert took one end.
Emily almost refused, then let him.
They carried it toward the house.
Susan followed three steps behind.
Inside, the tree was still glowing.
The television screensaver had changed to a photograph of a mountain lake none of them had visited. Christmas music had stopped because Margaret's phone had disconnected from the speaker.
Emily set the case on the dining table.
The cinnamon rolls sat beneath plastic wrap.
One had been cut in half and left on a plate.
Margaret went into the kitchen and turned off the coffee maker.
It was such an ordinary thing that Emily nearly cried.
Instead she sat.
For the next forty minutes she read.
May you like
Nobody interrupted.
The trust document was less understandable than the statements.
