Chapter 20
Elaine,
I cannot continue sending money through the foundation. Grant has begun asking questions about the properties, and I will not have him discover the arrangement before I am ready.
The next page was missing.
I searched the folder.
“Where is the rest?”
“I don’t know,” Tessa said. “It was already missing when I found the file.”
“What arrangement?”
“There was another note.”
She took a folded page from the back of the folder and placed it on the table.
It was written in my father’s hand.
If anything happens to me before the transfer is complete, make sure the proceeds go to Lillian. She has earned the right to leave without asking permission.
Lillian.
My mother’s name.
I read the sentence several times.
“What does this mean?”
“I think your father was trying to return money to her.”
“Then why didn’t he?”
“Maybe he did. Maybe the transfer was never completed. Maybe someone interrupted it.”
I looked at the date.
It was seven years ago.
The year my father died.
A strange feeling moved through me—not relief, exactly, but the first loosening of an old knot.
My father might have spent decades controlling the truth, but perhaps near the end, he had begun to understand what he had done.
“Did Eleanor tell you anything else?” I asked.
“She said your mother had contacted her shortly before she died. She intended to reopen the property dispute, but she was ill and afraid the process would consume the rest of her life.”
I remembered my mother’s final months. She had been tired, but she had insisted she was fine. When I offered to arrange better medical care, she had smiled and said she had everything she needed.
I had accepted the answer because it allowed me to remain uninvolved.
“She knew she was dying,” I said.
Tessa looked down.
“She knew she might not have time to finish.”
“And she left the documents in my father’s office.”
“Maybe she meant for you to find them eventually.”
I thought of the letter hidden behind the photograph.
My mother had not trusted my father to tell me the truth. She had trusted time.
I closed the folder.
“I’ll take these to Miriam.”
Tessa nodded.
Neither of us moved.
The café around us had grown busier. Students laughed near the windows. A barista called out someone’s name. Ordinary life continued around the fragile remains of ours.