Chương 7
Nora appeared in the doorway ten minutes later holding coffee.
“You look terrible.”
“Daniel Cho is missing.”
Nora lowered the mug.
“Who?”
Rachel explained.
Nora listened without interruption.
Then she set the coffee on the dresser.
“You need a lawyer.”
“I know.”
“You say that like you’re not going to get one.”
“I’m going to.”
“When?”
Rachel rubbed her face.
“Today.”
Nora pointed at her.
“Before you become Nancy Drew.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
“I don’t know Nancy Drew’s age.”
“Probably seventeen.”
“Then you’re too old. Get a lawyer.”
Sophie spoke from the floor.
“She does this.”
Both women looked at her.
Her eyes remained closed.
“What?” Rachel asked.
“Acts like if she can organize a problem, it stops being scary.”
Rachel stared.
Sophie pulled the blanket over her head.
Nora said, “I like her.”
Rachel threw a pillow.
By nine, Rachel had an attorney.
Not because she knew one.
Because Nora did.
Leah Benton handled employment disputes and civil litigation, not criminal defense or probate, but she knew people who did.
Within two hours Rachel had spoken to two attorneys.
One advised her regarding the assault and police investigation.
The other, Calvin Price, specialized in probate litigation.
Calvin was sixty, rumpled, and perpetually annoyed by technology. He met Rachel over video while eating what appeared to be dry cereal from a mug.
He studied the photographs of the will.
“This could be real.”
“That sounds encouraging.”
“It isn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because if the original cannot be found, proving a lost will can be difficult. Not impossible.”
“What about the witnesses?”
“One is missing.”
“Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“The other is Judith Bell.”
“I’m looking.”
Rachel glanced at Sophie, who was sitting at Nora’s kitchen table scrolling through her phone.
Calvin continued.
“Do not assume the photographed document automatically controls anything. We need authenticity, execution, testamentary capacity, lack of revocation. We need to know whether your father-in-law later destroyed it intentionally.”
“He didn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Rachel bristled.
Calvin noticed.
“That feeling you’re having?”
“What feeling?”
“The one where you hate me because I won’t tell you what you want.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You will.”
Despite herself, Rachel smiled.
He leaned closer to the camera.
“Margaret has a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Name?”
“Richard Fallon.”
Calvin stopped eating.
“That’s inconvenient.”
“You know him?”
“Everybody knows Richard.”
“Good?”
“Expensive.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Yes. Good.”
Rachel looked down at the photographs again.
“What happens if the will is real?”
Calvin’s expression changed.
“Then your mother-in-law has a serious problem.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“You may have a serious problem.”
Sophie looked up.
Rachel ended the call twenty minutes later.
“What did he mean?” Sophie asked.
“That if the document is fake or invalid, Margaret can argue I fabricated it.”
“Why would you?”
“To influence the estate.”
“You don’t inherit anything.”
“No.”
“So that’s stupid.”
“People do stupid things.”
Sophie stared at her.
“Did you make it?”
Rachel looked at her.
The question hurt.
That didn’t make it unfair.
“No.”
Sophie nodded.
“Okay.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophie put her phone down.
“I’m trying not to decide who everyone is tonight, remember?”
Rachel leaned against the counter.
Fair.
At 11:40, Evan texted.
I need to talk to you.
Rachel read it once.
Then again.
She did not answer.
A minute later:
I know you hate me.
Then:
I am not asking you to forgive me.
Rachel turned the phone face down.
Nora was making grilled cheese.
Sophie was on the back steps talking to one of her roommates.
Life continued.
Bread burned slightly.
A cat knocked a spoon onto the floor.
Someone outside used a leaf blower despite it being the wrong season.
Rachel stood in the kitchen and felt fury rise because ordinary things were happening.
She wanted the world to stop long enough to acknowledge what Evan had done.
Instead Nora scraped black cheese from a skillet and muttered, “Perfect.”
Rachel laughed.
Then cried.
Quietly.
Nora didn’t touch her.
She just turned off the stove.
The police found Daniel Cho the next day.
Alive.
His car had gone off a rural road about forty miles north of town.
He had spent nearly thirty hours in a ditch with a broken ankle and a dead phone.
No crime.
No conspiracy.
Rachel felt relief first.
Then embarrassment.
She had wanted Margaret responsible.
Not consciously.
But enough that when Vega said accident, Rachel experienced disappointment underneath relief.
She hated herself for that.
Daniel was taken to the hospital.
Vega told Rachel not to contact him yet.
Again.
That afternoon, Evan came to Nora’s house.
He did not knock.
He stood across the street.
Nora saw him through the living room window.
“That him?”
Rachel looked.
Faded blue T-shirt.
Dark jeans.
Same clothes as the backyard.
For a bizarre second she wondered whether he had changed and put them back on or simply never changed.
Sophie came beside her.
“I didn’t tell him.”
“I know.”
Nora said, “Call the police?”
Rachel thought.
“No.”
“Rachel.”
“He’s across the street.”
“That sentence has true-crime energy.”
Rachel almost smiled.
Evan saw her in the window.
He did not wave.
Rachel went outside.
Nora said her name sharply.
Rachel stopped at the door.
“I’m not going near him.”
Sophie followed anyway.
The three women stood on Nora’s front porch.
Evan remained on the opposite sidewalk.
He looked exhausted.
There was dirt still under one thumbnail.
Rachel noticed that from thirty feet away.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“You saw.”
He nodded.
“I’ll go.”
“Then why come?”
He looked toward Sophie.
“You called me from this neighborhood.”
Sophie’s face fell.
“Oh.”
“Your location history.”
She pulled out her phone.
“Are you tracking me?”
“We have family sharing.”
“Had.”
She began tapping the screen furiously.
Rachel looked back at Evan.
“You need to leave.”
He nodded again.
Then he reached into his pocket.
Nora moved beside Rachel.
Evan stopped.
“It’s paper.”
May you like
He took out a folded envelope.
“I found this in Dad’s old truck.”
