Chương 5
He had been grateful.
Gratitude had become permission without his noticing.
His phone vibrated.
MOTHER.
He watched it ring until the call ended.
A message appeared.
You are frightening the children and humiliating this family over a misunderstanding. Call me before lawyers make repair impossible.
Daniel read it twice.
Then he took a screenshot and forwarded it to Detective Ortiz.
Natalie was discharged late the following afternoon with instructions for close follow-up and immediate return if she experienced bleeding, pain, dizziness, or other concerning symptoms. Her obstetrician met them before discharge and spoke carefully about uncertainty. The baby appeared stable. Natalie’s condition had been treated. Further monitoring would be necessary. Nobody promised that the previous exposures had caused no harm.
Daniel wanted a promise.
He received appointments instead.
Laura brought the girls home that evening. The wedding flowers still filled the house because the florist had delivered several arrangements before the reception. White roses and pale ranunculus stood in vases on the kitchen island, dining table, and mantel. Their sweetness had become cloying overnight.
Emily entered first, carrying her ivory bow in one hand.
“Is Natalie okay?”
Natalie crouched slowly despite Daniel’s attempt to stop her.
“I’m here.”
Emily touched her stomach.
“Is the baby okay?”
“The doctors are watching us both.”
“That means maybe.”
“Yes.”
Emily nodded. She preferred an honest maybe to a comforting lie, but it still made her face tighten.
Sophie placed her overnight bag near the stairs.
“Did the police arrest Grandma?”
“No,” Daniel said.
“Why not?”
“They’re still investigating.”
“She did it.”
“I believe you.”
“Then why don’t they?”
“It isn’t that simple.”
Sophie’s expression changed.
Adults used that phrase when simplicity would require them to act.
Natalie saw it too.
“The police need evidence they can prove,” she said. “What you and Emily saw matters. They have to collect everything carefully.”
Sophie folded her arms.
“Grandma always says people use rules when they don’t want to do the right thing.”
Laura let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost not.
“That sounds like her.”
Sophie looked at her aunt.
“Are you on Grandma’s side?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Sophie waited.
Laura removed one earring and rubbed the sore place in her earlobe.
“I love her,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with that right now. But I believe you.”
“Dad loves her too.”
Daniel felt Natalie glance at him.
“Yes,” he said.
Sophie’s arms tightened across her chest.
“Do you still?”
The question had no safe answer.
Daniel sat on the lowest stair so he would not tower over her.
“I don’t know how to stop loving someone in one night,” he said. “But loving her doesn’t mean I’ll protect her from what she did.”
Sophie looked toward the kitchen, where flowers from the wedding stood in perfect arrangements no one had requested.
“She said she was protecting us.”
“When?”
“At her house. She didn’t say from what.”
Emily climbed onto the stair beside Daniel.
“She said babies take things.”
The room went quiet.
Daniel asked, “What things?”
Emily shrugged.
“Rooms. Money. Daddies.”
Laura closed her eyes.
Natalie turned toward the window.
Daniel tried to remember every conversation his mother had held with the girls without him. There were too many. After Claire’s death, Margaret had become part grandmother, part parent, part administrator. She picked them up from school twice a week and kept bedrooms for them at her house. She had taught Sophie to set a formal table and Emily to float on her back. Daniel had regarded those hours as evidence that his daughters were surrounded by family.
Now each memory opened in a different direction.
“When did she say that?” he asked.
“The day she showed us the trust book,” Sophie said.
Laura’s head lifted.
“What trust book?”
“The red one with all the names.”
Daniel knew the document. His father’s family trust had been bound in red leather for a ceremonial signing years earlier. The legal copy lived with the firm, but Margaret kept the bound duplicate in her study.
“What did she show you?”
“Our names,” Sophie said. “She said Grandpa made sure we would always have the company. Then she said the baby changed the numbers.”
Daniel stood.
Laura moved to the kitchen island and pressed her fingers against the marble edge.
“She told me she’d spoken to Whitcomb about the trust,” she said.
“When?”
“After the pregnancy announcement.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“She said she was checking whether the new child would be included automatically. I thought it was estate planning.”
“Did she say why she cared?”
Laura’s eyes filled with anger, some of it directed at him.
“Because she cares about everything. Because she has spent our entire lives making ordinary questions sound like emergencies. I didn’t know she was going to poison Natalie.”
The word hung there.
It was the first time any of them had said it inside the house.
Emily began to cry without sound. Tears slid down her face while she stared at the floor, ashamed of them.
Natalie reached her first.
“You don’t have to be calm,” she said.
Emily pressed her face into Natalie’s shoulder, careful of her stomach.
Sophie remained near the stairs.
“I knew before the wedding,” she said.
Daniel looked at her.
“How long before?”
“I saw the bottle in Grandma’s purse at lunch. Then I saw the bowl. I didn’t know what the pills were. I thought vitamins were supposed to be good.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Sophie’s mouth twisted.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“In the car.”
He remembered driving from Laura’s birthday lunch. Sophie had said Grandma put something in Natalie’s tea. Daniel had been answering a call from the regional manager in Boston. He had told Sophie it was probably sweetener and asked her to give him five minutes.
He sat back down.
Sophie watched the recognition reach him.
“You never gave me five minutes,” she said.
May you like
Daniel had no defense.
That night he removed every vase of wedding flowers from the bedrooms because Natalie said the smell made her nauseated. He carried them to the garage and lined them along the wall beside bicycles, unopened paint cans, and a box of Claire’s books he had still not decided where to place.
