Chương 11
“No,” Kyle said. “But depending on your lawyer, it may hurt the same.”
The man frowned and returned to the elevator.
Paige and Kyle stood in silence after the doors closed.
“I’m not ready to forgive you,” she said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were going to.”
“Probably.”
She nodded.
Kyle looked at the carpet. “Calvin didn’t know she used the medical release page.”
“You believe that?”
“I think he knew Dad hadn’t signed the full amendment. I don’t think he wanted to know how Tabitha solved that problem.”
“That is not innocence.”
“No.”
For once, they agreed without relief.
Tabitha’s deposition took place in August.
She arrived in a pale gray suit and no pearls. Her answers were careful. She claimed Thomas directed every substantive change. She said he asked her to assemble the document electronically because his hands tired easily. She said the signature page came from the medical release with his permission.
“Why was the document backdated?” Penelope asked.
“It reflected the date of his decision.”
“Why did you ask Kyle to state he witnessed a signature he did not witness?”
“I believed he had.”
“After he told you in writing that he had not?”
“He was confused about the question.”
“Why did you retain the clause requiring removal of the white roses?”
“Thomas disliked the garden.”
“Did he tell you that before or after March second?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Did you know that clause appeared in a decoy draft?”
“No.”
“Why did you kick a planter beside the rose bed on June third?”
Tabitha’s attorney objected to the characterization.
Tabitha waited, then said, “I lost my balance.”
“Why did you bring moving boxes?”
“To help Paige begin an inevitable transition.”
“Why did you tell her Kyle helped you steal tomorrow?”
For the first time, Tabitha’s posture changed.
“I did not say that.”
Paige sat at the far end of the room as an observer. Her hands remained folded, though her nails pressed into her palms.
Penelope read from Paige’s contemporaneous statement.
Tabitha’s lawyer objected again.
Tabitha looked at Paige.
“You were very emotional,” she said. “Your father had just died.”
“So had yours,” Paige replied before Penelope could stop her.
Tabitha’s eyes sharpened.
“My father died when I was twenty-two,” she said.
The room became still.
Penelope instructed Paige not to answer further.
For the next hour, Tabitha denied knowing the document was invalid. She described Thomas as decisive, Calvin as devoted, Kyle as unreliable, and Paige as absent until the final stage of illness.
Some of it was false.
Some of it was true enough to hurt.
During a break, Paige found Tabitha alone in the restroom, washing her hands.
They looked at each other through the mirror.
“You shouldn’t be speaking to me,” Tabitha said.
“I’m not.”
“That sentence counts.”
Paige reached for a paper towel.
Tabitha turned off the faucet. Without red lipstick and pearls, she looked less glamorous and more tired. Fine lines showed around her mouth.
“Calvin was going to lose everything,” she said.
Paige dried her hands. “So you stole my father’s signature.”
“He signed the page.”
“For a medical release.”
“He knew Calvin needed the house.”
“Did he tell you to attach his signature to a trust amendment?”
Tabitha’s silence lasted one second too long.
Then she smiled faintly. “You think truth arrives in clean little envelopes because your father wrote your name on them.”
Paige threw the paper towel away.
“What do you think arrives?”
“Leverage.”
“You sound proud of that.”
“No. I sound like someone who learned early.”
Tabitha adjusted one sleeve. “My mother lost our house when I was fourteen. The bank changed the locks while she was at work. Our neighbors watched us carry trash bags to a borrowed car. She spent ten years saying she should have seen it coming.”
“That doesn’t make this yours.”
“No. It makes me unwilling to stand politely while a family loses something because the men in it are too ashamed to admit they’re drowning.”
“You could have helped Calvin tell the truth.”
“Truth does not refinance six million dollars.”
“Neither does fraud.”
“It might have.”
The honesty was so brief Paige almost doubted hearing it.
Tabitha picked up her handbag.
“Your father liked tests,” she said. “He tested Calvin’s loyalty, Kyle’s discipline, your devotion. You passed because you came home at the correct moment. Don’t confuse that with being better.”
She left.
Paige remained beside the sink, looking at the empty place where Tabitha had stood.
At mediation two weeks later, Calvin offered to withdraw the disputed amendment if Paige agreed to sell Everett House to Sable Ridge, use part of the proceeds to stabilize Everett Timber, and divide the remainder equally.
Tabitha would admit no wrongdoing. Kyle’s false declaration would be treated as withdrawn. Each side would pay its own legal fees.
The proposal would give Paige enough money to return to Chicago, buy another home, and work only when she wanted. Calvin could save the company. Kyle could pay his mortgage and create a college fund for Lily.
The mansion would be demolished.
The rose garden would become a private road.
Penelope called it a commercially rational offer.
Paige stared at her.
“I did not call it acceptable,” Penelope said. “I called it rational.”
Calvin sat across the mediation table without Tabitha. Rusk had advised separate rooms, but Calvin insisted on speaking directly.
His hands shook when he poured water.
“I can’t save the company without liquidity,” he said.
“You might not save it with liquidity.”
“I can restructure.”
“You hid the debt from Dad.”
“Because every time I told him we needed to change, he talked about how the company survived 1987.”
“He was afraid.”
“So was I.”
Paige looked at the settlement spreadsheet.
“You knew the amendment was assembled after he signed the medical page.”
Calvin stared at the water.
“Did you know?” she asked.
“I knew Tabitha had prepared a final version.”
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“That is not what I asked.”
“I did not watch her attach the page.”
