“No.”
“Then where was it?”
“With her attorney.”
I stared at him.
“What attorney?”
“Margaret Ellis.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Arthur seemed surprised.
“You’ve never heard of her?”
“No.”
“She handled your mother’s estate.”
“No. A man named Daniel Price handled the estate.”
Arthur went completely still.
Ryan noticed too.
“Who is Daniel Price?” he asked.
Arthur looked at me.
“I don’t know.”
A strange coldness settled over the room.
Not fear.
Something quieter.
The sensation of discovering that a familiar story had been missing entire pages.
“My mother’s estate attorney introduced himself as Daniel Price,” I said. “He met me twice after she died. He gave me documents to sign.”
“What documents?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Claire.”
“I was twenty-four. My mother had just died. He told me there was almost nothing in the estate.”
Arthur stood.
“Do you still have copies?”
“I might.”
“Where?”
I thought.
Storage boxes.
Apartment moves.
Marriage.
Then I remembered.
“The lake house.”
Arthur turned.
“What?”
“I stored some of Mom’s things there before I stopped going.”
“When?”
“About six months after she died.”
He stared at me.
“You still had a key?”
“I had Grandma’s old spare.”
Something unreadable crossed his face.
“And those boxes are still there?”
“As far as I know.”
Arthur slowly sat down again.
Ryan looked between us.
“What are you thinking?”
Arthur did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “I think Claire should speak with Margaret Ellis.”
I folded my arms.
“And I think you should stop protecting me from whatever you’re not saying.”
“I’m not protecting you.”
“You keep hesitating.”
“Because suspicion is not evidence.”
“Suspicion of what?”
Arthur looked directly at me.
“That someone interfered with the communication between you and the family after your mother died.”
Ryan exhaled.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea.”
Arthur nodded reluctantly.
“Yes.”
“What idea?”
“That your mother may have made arrangements I was never told about.”
Ryan left shortly afterward.
Before he did, he stood near the door.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at him.
“For what part?”
He accepted the question.
“All of it.”
I waited.
He continued.
“The affair. The money. Yesterday. Believing things about you instead of asking.”
I studied him.
“Why Vanessa?”
His eyes lowered.
For the first time, he did not offer an efficient answer.
“I was angry.”
“At me?”
“At what I thought you were hiding.”
“So you chose someone else.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“No.”
He looked toward the babies.
“I think I wanted to become the person who had been betrayed instead of admitting I was afraid I wasn’t enough for you.”
That answer hurt because it sounded true.
Not sufficient.
Not excusable.
But true.
“And now she’s pregnant,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Does she know you came here alone?”
“Yes.”
“How did she feel about that?”
Ryan gave a weary half-smile.
“Not great.”
For the first time, Vanessa stopped being merely the mistress in my mind.
She became a woman in an apartment somewhere, pregnant, uncertain, attached to a man whose marriage was ending messily.
I did not like her.
I was not ready to understand her.
But I realized I knew almost nothing about what Ryan had told her.
“Don’t make promises to me,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
I looked at him.
“But show up for Ethan and Emma when you say you will.”
“I will.”
“That is the only thing I’m asking from you right now.”
He nodded.
Then he left.
Arthur, who had pretended very convincingly not to listen, looked at me.
“You handled that well.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Turn this into a business evaluation.”
His mouth twitched.
“I was going to say you sounded like your grandmother.”
“That is only slightly better.”
“Then I’ll say nothing.”
“Perfect.”
We sat together beside the incubators.
For several minutes, silence was enough.
Margaret Ellis arrived that afternoon.
She was seventy-one, silver-haired, sharply dressed, carrying a leather portfolio that appeared old enough to have its own biography.
When she saw me, she stopped just inside the room.
“Oh, Claire.”
There was so much recognition in her voice that I immediately knew something was wrong.
“You know me?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know you.”
Pain flickered across her expression.
“No,” she said softly. “I suppose you wouldn’t.”
She looked at Arthur.
“You didn’t tell her?”
“I only learned today that she never met you.”
Margaret closed her eyes briefly.
Then she sat beside my bed.
“I am very sorry.”
I had heard enough apologies recently.
“For what?”
“For assuming silence meant consent.”
I glanced at Arthur.
“What does that mean?”
Margaret opened her portfolio.
Inside was a stack of neatly organized papers.
“Your mother asked me to prepare a letter for you nine years ago.”
“The letter Ryan saw?”
“Possibly.”
“Why didn’t you send it?”
“I did.”
“To where?”
“Your apartment on Westbrook Avenue.”
I stared at her.
“I lived there.”
“It was returned.”
Of course it was.
“Marked refused?”
Margaret nodded.
Arthur looked grim.
“What happened next?”
“I contacted the number your mother had listed for you.”
“What number?”
Margaret read it.
I shook my head.
“That was never my number.”
Arthur leaned forward.
“Whose number was it?”
Margaret hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
“Did someone answer?”
“Yes.”
My heartbeat quickened.
“What did they say?”
Margaret looked directly at me.
“A woman answered.”
“Who?”
“She said she was your personal assistant.”
“I have never had a personal assistant.”
Margaret’s expression tightened.
“She told me you did not want anything from the Bennett family and that you wished the file to be closed.”
Arthur stood and walked toward the window.
I understood why.
For a man who rarely displayed anger, movement was sometimes the only sign.
“Did you keep the letter?” I asked.
“Yes.”
She opened the portfolio.
“I kept everything.”
Then she placed a sealed envelope on the table.
My name was written on the front.
Not in Margaret’s handwriting.
In my mother’s.
I knew the slant immediately.
The exaggerated loop in the C.
The long tail beneath the final e.
For nine years, my mother’s handwriting had existed only on birthday cards in a box.
Now there it was.
Claire.
Just my name.
My hands began to shake.
Margaret noticed.
“There is no need to open it today.”
I looked at her.
“I think there is.”
Arthur came back to my side.
He did not touch me.
He simply stood there.
Present.
I broke the seal.
Inside were four pages.
I unfolded the first.
My mother’s handwriting filled the page.
The date at the top was six weeks before she died.
I read the first lines silently.
Then again.
Because the words did not make sense the first time.
My darling Claire,
There are things I told you about your grandfather that were unfair, and things I allowed you to believe because I was ashamed to admit the truth.
My throat tightened.
I continued.
Arthur did not take your grandmother’s house from you. He did not cut me off without reason. And he did not ask you to choose between us. I did.
I stopped.
Arthur looked away.
I could not read the next paragraph.
Not yet.
I lowered the letter.
“Did you know this was in here?”
Margaret nodded.
“I witnessed the letter.”
“Then tell me one thing.”
“Anything I can.”
“Why now?”
Margaret looked confused.
“What do you mean?”
“These papers appeared in my desk three months ago. Why would someone send them now after nine years?”
Margaret’s face changed.
“I didn’t send them.”
Arthur turned.
“Neither did I.”
The room went very quiet.
I looked down at my mother’s letter.
A paper I had never received.
A trust I had never known existed.
Birthday letters returned to my grandfather.
An attorney I had never met.
Another attorney no one recognized.
And documents that somehow appeared in my home shortly before my marriage collapsed.
Then Margaret said something that made the mystery deepen further.
“There is one more thing you should know.”
I looked up.
She reached into her portfolio and removed a small photograph.
It showed my mother standing outside the lake house.
She was younger than I remembered her at the end.
She was smiling.
Beside her stood another woman.
A woman I recognized.
Not from childhood.
From much more recently.
My breath caught.
“That’s impossible.”
Arthur leaned closer.
“You know her?”
I did.
I had seen that woman every week for the past three years.
She was the accountant Ryan and I hired shortly after we bought our condo.
The woman who prepared our taxes.
The woman who knew where we banked.
The woman who knew my address.
And the woman who, only three months earlier, had called me unexpectedly and asked whether Ryan and I had ever discussed creating separate trusts for our children.
Her name was Evelyn Shaw.
I looked at Margaret.
“How did my mother know Evelyn?”
Margaret studied the photograph.
“That,” she said, “is exactly what I hoped you might be able to tell me.”
I turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting on the back.
My mother’s.
Three words.
Evelyn knows everything.
And beneath them, a date.
Eleven days before my mother died.
END OF PART 2 – LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT “”THE ENTIRE STORY”” IF YOU WANT TO READ THE FULL STORY.
