Part 7
“I’m here.”
She swallowed. Her throat hurt. “Don’t call anyone.”
Everett leaned closer. “You hit the floor.”
“I know.”
“You may need help.”
“No doctors. No police. No people in uniforms. Please.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, “All right.”
Maren made a sound of disbelief. “Everett, she could be injured.”
“She said no.”
“She is not thinking clearly.”
Lila’s eyes opened wider.
Everett turned toward Maren.
His voice did not rise. “Do not say that again.”
Maren stared at him.
“Not tonight,” he said. “Not ever again.”
A change passed across her face, subtle but complete. The old confidence did not disappear. It simply lost its footing.
“You are making a mistake,” she said.
“I have made mistakes,” Everett replied. “You have benefited from them. That is not the same as being right.”
Owen sat back on his heels, breathing hard. He looked as though he had been holding a weight against his chest for years and had finally let it fall, only to realize it had broken something underneath him.
Lila stared at the gold buttons on Everett’s jacket.
When she was little, she used to count them while he carried her upstairs after she fell asleep in the car. One, two, three, four. She had believed he was invincible because he wore dark suits and knew how to make adults stop talking when he entered a room.
Now he was shaking.
Not visibly to anyone else. But she could feel it through the hand beneath her shoulder.
“You read the letter?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And you believe it?”
Everett’s eyes filled again.
“Yes.”
She looked away.
That word should have healed something. Instead, it made the wound clearer.
“You should have believed me when I was alive enough to tell you,” she said.
Everett lowered his head.
“I should have.”
Owen looked toward Maren. “Give him the folder.”
Maren did not move.
“What folder?” Everett asked.
Owen’s voice changed. It became steadier, harder. “The one you brought tonight. The real one.”
Maren’s eyes narrowed.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you carried two folders in from the car.”
Everett’s gaze went to her hands.
Maren held nothing.
Owen said, “The black one is in your bag.”
Maren laughed softly, but it sounded thin. “You have been watching me?”
“I have been watching everyone.”
The answer seemed to surprise him as much as it did the others.
For years, Owen had been the family’s easiest child. That was what Maren called him. Easy. He did not demand. He did not accuse. He avoided open conflict with the skill of someone who had learned early that anger in the Voss house always had collateral damage.
Lila had once envied him for that.
She understood now that he had paid for it differently.
Maren reached for the small bag resting near the hallway wall.
Everett stood.
“Leave it.”
She stopped.
“Bring it here,” he said.
Maren’s mouth tightened.
For a moment, Lila thought she might refuse. That she might walk out through the hallway and disappear behind the warm lights and the dark panels and leave the rest of them to pick through the wreckage.
Instead, she picked up the bag.
The sound of its clasp opening seemed absurdly loud.
She drew out a second folder.
It was thinner than the first. No embossed seal. No polished legal cover. Just a stack of papers clipped together with a dark binder clip.
Everett took it from her.
His fingers moved through the pages.
Lila could not see the words from where she lay, but she watched his face.
He read one page.
Then another.
Then he looked at Maren with an expression she had never seen on him before.
It was not anger.
It was recognition.
“You authorized transfers from Helena’s private account,” he said.
Maren’s face emptied.
Everett kept reading. “You moved money into the foundation’s maintenance reserve. You listed the transfers as temporary loans. Then you used the reserve to cover the renovation debt.”
Maren said nothing.
Owen looked down.
Lila felt the room tilt again, but not from the fall.
“The renovations,” she said.
Maren looked at her.
“The room changes. The new wing. The paintings. All of it.”
“It was not for me,” Maren said.
Lila gave a weak, disbelieving laugh.
“No?”
“It was for the house.”
“The house was fine.”
“The house was falling apart.”
“No. You were afraid you would fall apart.”
Maren’s eyes flashed.
“You have no idea what it takes to keep something like this standing.”
“Then it should have fallen.”
The words came out before Lila could soften them.
May you like
Maren flinched.
For the first time, her face looked older than her dress, older than her jewelry, older than the carefully arranged hair at her shoulders. She looked tired. Not sympathetic. Just tired in a way that made Lila understand she had been fighting for her place in the house long before Helena died.
