Chapter 5
A room I did not know.
A crib I had never seen.
Corinne checking the locks before going to sleep.
Her mother perhaps making tea.
Owen waking in the night and reaching for her.
I had missed one pediatric appointment and called it a scheduling problem.
She had been building a life without me because she could no longer trust the one we shared.
The final page began with a line that seemed almost gentle.
There are things you do not know about this house, Grant. Some of them concern me. Some concern your family. One concerns the reason I stayed as long as I did.
I sat straighter.
Beneath it was a photocopy of a document.
At the top, in bold letters, was the name Keaton Family Holdings.
I recognized the company. It owned several properties, including the Belle Meade house. My father had established it before I joined the family business. After his death, I became managing partner.
I read the next line.
Beneficial ownership transfer agreement.
My name appeared under “current trustee.”
Corinne’s appeared under “designated beneficiary.”
I frowned.
There were dates, signatures, and legal terms I only half understood. I had signed something similar two years earlier, when my father’s estate had been reorganized. My attorney had explained that several family properties were being placed into a protective structure.
I had trusted him.
I had signed.
At the bottom of the page, Corinne had written:
Your father changed the agreement after he learned what happened to your mother.
I stopped breathing for a moment.
My mother had died when I was twenty-six. She and my father had been separated at the time, though neither of them spoke publicly about it. I knew there had been arguments over money. I knew she had moved to a small house outside Franklin.
But my father had never discussed the details.
I had assumed there were none worth knowing.
The next page was a letter from my father’s former attorney, dated five years earlier.
Grant,
Your father instructed me to explain this only if the circumstances required it. His concern was that you had begun to imitate the very behavior that ended his marriage.
I read the sentence again.
A bitter laugh escaped me.
My father had been unfaithful to my mother. I had known that. Everyone in the family had known, though we used softer words. We called it a difficult period. We said they had grown apart.