Chương 5
“You verified the sound.”
“I argued with Leonard.”
“You found a tool.”
“I waited.”
“Eight minutes is not—”
“Try holding your breath for eight minutes.”
Nia took off her coat.
“Mara.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not going to say the perfect thing. I drove here from a twelve-hour shift and bought you a sandwich with mayonnaise even though I can never remember whether you hate mayonnaise or mustard.”
“Mayonnaise.”
“See? I’m already failing.”
Mara looked at the wrapped sandwich.
Nia pulled out the other chair.
“You heard something no one else believed,” she said. “Then you acted. That is what happened.”
“Leonard says I had a lapse.”
“Leonard once told Dad that a family couldn’t tell the difference between walnut and mahogany under funeral lighting.”
“He was right.”
“That is not the point.”
Mara peeled back the sandwich paper and removed a wilted piece of lettuce.
Nia watched her.
“What?”
“You’re dismantling food. That means you’re scared.”
“It means the lettuce is old.”
“You only notice lettuce when you’re scared.”
Mara put it down.
The ordinary familiarity of the comment hurt more than sympathy would have.
Nia lowered her voice. “Did you see her face?”
“Yes.”
“Was she conscious?”
“No.”
“Could she have known where she was?”
“I don’t know.”
Nia looked toward the dark window.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
A truck passed on the street below, making the glass tremble in its frame.
Their father had died in the preparation room of the funeral home four years earlier. A heart attack, sudden and severe. Leonard had found him on the floor beside the stainless-steel table and called Mara before calling Nia because Mara was the one who worked there.
For months afterward, Mara had replayed the final voicemail her father left her that morning. He had asked her to pick up coffee filters and complained about a hinge on the back door. Nothing meaningful. Nothing prophetic. His last words to her were, “The cheap ones collapse, so don’t get those.”
She kept the voicemail because it was ordinary.
It proved he had expected another morning.
Nia folded her hands around her coffee cup.
“Leonard knew Dad wanted the business to go to you.”
Mara stared at her.
“That has nothing to do with tonight.”
“You always say that whenever Leonard does something.”
“Because you connect him to everything.”
“He bought Dad’s shares from the estate for almost nothing.”
“The business was in debt.”
“According to Leonard.”
“According to the books.”
“Whose books?”
Mara pushed the sandwich away.
Nia sighed.
“I’m not trying to start the old fight.”
“You started it before you took off your coat.”
“I’m saying be careful. He’ll protect himself.”
“He already suspended me.”
“Of course he did.”
“I broke a coffin open with an estate tool.”
“And found a living woman.”
Mara rubbed the heel of her hand against her eyebrow.
Nia stood, carried the coffees to the sink, then returned with a blanket from the back of the couch. She placed it over Mara’s shoulders without asking.
“Try to sleep,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“Then lie down and fail properly.”
Mara looked up.
Nia’s face was exhausted. There was a faint indentation across her forehead from a surgical cap. She had driven twenty miles after a hospital shift because Mara had no phone.
Mara moved to the couch.
Nia turned off the kitchen light and sat on the floor beside her.
At three twenty, while Mara pretended to sleep, Nia’s borrowed phone rang.
The number was blocked.
Nia answered.
A man asked for Mara.
She sat up.
“Who is this?”
“Adrian Harrow.”
Nia held out the phone.
Mara took it.
For a moment she heard only a soft mechanical hum and distant voices.
Then Adrian said, “She’s alive.”
Mara closed her eyes.
The blanket slipped from one shoulder.
“Is she awake?”
“No. They stabilized her. The doctor says there’s brain activity, but they won’t tell me what that means yet.”
“It means they don’t know.”
“Yes.”
His voice sounded thinner than it had in the chapel.
Mara heard footsteps on his end, then the squeak of a hospital door.
“The police said you’re suspended,” he said.
“They work quickly.”
“Danner told them you acted irrationally.”
“I know.”
“He said you had a history of hearing things after your father died.”
Mara sat upright.
Nia looked at her.
“What exactly did he say?”
“That grief affected your judgment. He implied there had been prior incidents.”
“There were no prior incidents.”
“I believed him for about thirty seconds.”
Mara said nothing.
“I’m not proud of that,” Adrian added.
“Why are you calling?”
A pause.
“I want you to tell me everything that happened before you opened the coffin.”
“I gave the police a statement.”
“I’m not the police.”
“That is one reason not to tell you.”
“I’m her son.”
“That is another.”
The words landed hard.
Adrian breathed in.
Mara expected anger. Instead he said, “Fair.”
She stood and walked toward the window. On the street below, the traffic light changed for no cars.
“My mother called me yesterday morning,” he said. “I didn’t answer.”
Mara leaned against the sill.
“She left a message. She said she needed to correct something before the board meeting next week. I assumed she meant the foundation accounts. We had been arguing about them.”
“What foundation?”
“The Harrow Land Trust. She controlled it. I ran the estate operations. We disagreed about selling part of the eastern acreage.”
Mara waited.
“I called back two hours later. Marcus Vane answered her phone. He said she had collapsed.”
“Why did her attorney have her phone?”
“He said it was on the floor beside her.”
“That answer satisfied you?”
“At the time.”
He sounded angry now, but the anger had turned inward.
“What did her message say exactly?” Mara asked.
“That she had signed something she should not have signed. That she had been tired and Marcus had—”
He stopped.
“Had what?”
“The message cut off.”
“Do the police have it?”
May you like
“Yes.”
“Then let them handle it.”
