Chương 4
“I was younger and had no self-respect.”
A laugh surprised them both. It hurt Sienna’s shoulder, and she pressed her lips together until the pain passed.
Catherine sat in the vinyl chair.
For several minutes neither spoke. A cleaning cart squeaked along the hall. Somewhere nearby, a child complained that the television did not have the right channel. The ordinary sounds made Sienna feel briefly invisible, and she was grateful for it.
Then Catherine said, “I should have seen it.”
Sienna stared into the coffee. “You saw what I let you see.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have tonight.”
Catherine rubbed her thumb over a faint stain on the cup lid. “When you called last week and asked about the blue folder, I knew something was wrong.”
The blue folder had belonged to Sienna’s father. After he died, Catherine kept insurance papers in it. When Sienna was a teenager and needed to be picked up without explaining why, she would call and say she had forgotten the blue folder.
Garrick had been standing beside her during the call. She had not known whether her mother would remember.
“You remembered,” Sienna said.
“Of course I remembered.”
“Then why did you come alone?”
“I didn’t.”
Catherine explained that Fletcher and the board members had been waiting at a small hotel two miles from the estate. She had contacted Fletcher after receiving Sienna’s call, but she had not asked him to storm the house based on a code from twenty years earlier. She had asked him to review what she already had: photographs from two previous family gatherings, a voicemail in which Garrick could be heard telling Sienna she was not leaving, and copies of invoices anonymously mailed to Malcolm Reed three weeks earlier.
“The board was already investigating,” Catherine said. “They needed someone inside the house to confirm the records existed.”
Sienna looked up. “You knew about the invoices?”
“I suspected you sent them.”
“You could have warned me.”
“And say what? That your husband’s board was quietly considering whether he had diverted company money into private surveillance and legal intimidation? I didn’t know what you had found. I didn’t know what he knew.”
“You knew enough to bring police to dinner.”
“I knew enough to have them nearby.”
Sienna put down the coffee too hard. It sloshed over the rim.
“You turned my marriage into an operation.”
Catherine’s face tightened. “Your husband turned your marriage into a crime scene.”
The words struck the room and stayed there.
Sienna looked away.
Catherine stood, took two napkins from the dispenser, and wiped the coffee from the bedside table. Her movements were quick and angry.
“This is what you do,” Sienna said.
“What?”
“You make a case. You organize everything until there’s a version you can win.”
“I was trying to get you out alive.”
“And if I had said I fell?”
Catherine stopped.
Sienna watched the answer form and disappear.
“I would have taken you home with me,” Catherine said finally.
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
It was the first thing her mother had said all night that felt entirely safe.
Catherine sat again.
“I lost a witness once,” she said. “A woman named Dana Wilkes. Her husband had put her in the hospital twice. I pushed her to testify before she was ready because I believed urgency made me right. She recanted. He killed her eight months later.”
Sienna had heard the name as a child, spoken once behind a closed office door. She remembered her mother sitting at the kitchen table afterward, still wearing her coat, watching ice melt in a glass she never drank.
“I am not Dana,” Sienna said.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You know a pattern. You know what comes next in a file.”
Catherine looked down at her hands.
“Then tell me who you are in this,” she said.
Sienna wanted to answer. Instead, tears reached her eyes, sudden and humiliating. She turned her face toward the wall.
Catherine did not touch her.
At two in the morning, Officer Bell returned with news that Garrick had not been arrested.
The decision came from an on-call prosecutor who wanted further review of the medical evidence, witness statements, and alleged prior incidents. The officers had collected preliminary photographs, secured the firearm Garrick disclosed, and documented Sienna’s statement. Garrick had agreed, through counsel, not to contact Sienna until a temporary protective order could be requested the next morning.
“He agreed?” Sienna asked.
“His attorney agreed on his behalf.”
“So it means nothing.”
“It means less than a court order,” Officer Bell said. “It does not mean nothing.”
Catherine’s mouth flattened, but she did not interfere.
Officer Bell handed Sienna a card with a case number. “You may get messages from people connected to him. Save everything. Don’t respond unless your attorney advises it. If he appears at your mother’s home, call emergency services.”
“I don’t have an attorney.”
“I do,” Catherine said.
Sienna turned toward her. “No.”
Catherine blinked.
“I won’t use someone who owes you favors.”
“The attorney I have in mind owes me nothing.”
“Then give me the name. I’ll call myself.”
A strange expression crossed Catherine’s face. Pride and hurt, arriving together.
“All right.”
They left through the hospital’s side entrance. Rain had stopped, but the parking lot shone beneath the lamps. Catherine’s sedan smelled faintly of leather and peppermint. Sienna sat in the passenger seat with her sling propped against a folded coat.
Her phone was still at the mansion.
Catherine handed her an older device from the glove compartment.
“I keep it for travel,” she said. “It has a new number.”
“You keep a secret phone in your car?”
“I was a prosecutor.”
“You’ve been retired for six years.”
“Old habits.”
May you like
Sienna almost smiled.
They drove through empty streets. Fast-food signs glowed over deserted parking lots. A man in a reflective vest swept rainwater away from a gas station entrance. The world had continued while the Ashford family cracked open over dinner.
