Chương 6
That evening Nathan found her in Daniel’s study attempting to remove a jammed drawer.
“You know there are people employed to fix that.”
“That is exactly why I’m doing it.”
He stood in the doorway.
“Do I want to know?”
“No.”
Ava pulled harder.
The drawer opened suddenly and she nearly fell backward.
Nathan caught the edge of the desk, not her.
She looked at him.
“Thank you for not grabbing me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Inside the drawer were old batteries, two expired passports, a tape measure, an unopened deck of cards, and a receipt from a seafood restaurant dated three years earlier.
Nothing useful.
Nothing symbolic.
Nothing Daniel had hidden for the future.
Ava sat on the rug and laughed.
Nathan looked down at her.
“Should I call someone?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She held up the receipt.
“Eighty-seven dollars for oysters.”
“That sounds irresponsible.”
“He hated oysters.”
“Then criminal.”
Ava stared at the faded paper.
Maybe he had taken a client.
Maybe Vanessa.
Maybe Eleanor.
Maybe nobody she knew.
The fact that she would never know felt strangely comforting.
Daniel had possessed entire afternoons that did not belong to her.
She preferred that to turning every object he had touched into evidence.
“What did Vanessa do when you changed the security contract?” Nathan asked.
“She didn’t know.”
“Before that.”
Ava looked up.
“What do you mean?”
“When she came here after midnight.”
“She said she came for a scarf.”
“And you accepted that?”
“No.”
“You acted like you accepted it.”
“Yes.”
Nathan leaned against the doorframe.
“Why?”
Ava put the receipt back.
“Because Daniel had been dead eleven weeks. Eleanor had barely started sleeping. Vanessa was already fighting with people about the funeral expenses. I was pregnant and tired and I didn’t want to make the house feel like a crime scene.”
“So you changed security without confronting her.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds like a compromise Daniel would have enjoyed.”
Ava looked at him.
Nathan did not apologize.
She thought about throwing the deck of cards at him.
Instead she said, “Get out.”
He nodded.
At the doorway he stopped.
“Ava.”
“What?”
“You are allowed to be angry at people who are dead.”
“I know.”
“You say that like someone who doesn’t.”
Then he left.
A week later, Leah called with something new.
Vanessa’s lawyers had produced a copy of Daniel’s revised will marked with handwritten notes.
It was not the final signed version.
It was a working draft that had been kept in Daniel’s study.
Ava sat very still.
“The study here?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s a notation in my handwriting on page four. I gave that draft to Daniel during a meeting at the house.”
“When?”
“Six months before he died.”
“What happened to it afterward?”
“I assumed he destroyed it.”
“He didn’t.”
“No.”
Ava looked toward the closed study door.
Nathan had warned her.
Someone had entered after midnight.
The blue folder Vanessa had possibly been searching for was no longer an abstract suspicion.
“Did Vanessa submit the original?”
“A scanned copy.”
“Where’s the paper?”
“They haven’t said.”
“Can they be made to?”
“If it matters, we can press the issue.”
Ava rubbed her stomach.
The baby was hiccuping.
Small rhythmic taps under her ribs.
“What was different in the draft?”
“The house language was different.”
Ava waited.
“In that version,” Leah said, “Daniel was still considering leaving management of the property company to a three-person family committee after his death.”
“Who?”
“You. Eleanor. Vanessa.”
Ava closed her eyes.
“So she found the old draft.”
“That is one possibility.”
“And thought she’d been cut out.”
“Yes.”
“She thought the baby replaced her.”
“No. That still doesn’t make sense.”
Ava opened her eyes.
Leah continued.
“The child’s trust appears elsewhere. Vanessa may have combined separate provisions in her own mind. Or someone explained the draft badly. Or she saw another document.”
“Or Daniel told her something.”
“Yes.”
Ava stared at the wall.
She remembered Vanessa’s face after the slap.
Not when Nathan arrived.
Earlier.
At the top of the stairs, when Ava asked, You knew about the will?
That instant of fear.
Not rage.
Fear.
“She didn’t mean to tell me she knew,” Ava said.
Leah was quiet.
“No.”
The next piece came from Eleanor.
Not because anybody interrogated her.
Because one morning she walked into the kitchen carrying a small silver tray with two cups of tea and said, “Daniel and Vanessa had a terrible fight in this house three weeks before he signed those papers.”
Ava put down her toast.
Eleanor sat.
“I heard part of it from the hall.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because I spent two weeks convincing myself it didn’t matter.”
“And?”
“I am running out of ways to respect myself.”
Ava waited.
Eleanor looked older than she had the week before.
“Vanessa was crying. Daniel was shouting, which he almost never did. He told her he would not let her use my house as a life raft.”
Ava said nothing.
“She told him it was supposed to be hers someday.”
“What did he say?”
Eleanor looked at the tea.
“He said, ‘Not anymore.’”
Ava felt the room become very still.
“Anything else?”
“He said if she kept treating the family like a balance sheet, he would make sure she never controlled the property.”
“And she knew he meant it.”
“Yes.”
“Did she know he followed through?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask her?”
“No.”
Ava almost smiled.
“Of course not.”
Eleanor accepted that.
After a moment she said, “I should have.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid.”
The admission caught Ava off guard.
“Of Vanessa?”
“Of what would happen if I forced the conversation.”
“What happened anyway.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor looked toward the window.
“I spent my marriage keeping people from exploding. Robert had a temper. Daniel hated conflict. Vanessa chased it. I became good at moving things around so they didn’t touch.”
“People aren’t furniture.”
“I am aware of that now.”
Ava took a bite of toast.
May you like
It had gone cold.
Eleanor looked at her.
