My hand tightened around the phone.
“What?”
“I realize how that sounds,” Nora said gently. “But she was very specific.”
My grandmother had known David only briefly before she died. At the funeral, he had worn a dark suit and said all the right things. He had called her a practical woman, as if practicality explained the fierce tenderness with which she had loved me.
“What does the letter say?” I asked.
“I haven’t opened it. I’m not permitted to. You need to come to my office.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
I looked toward the hallway, where my children slept in the peaceful ignorance of the very young.
“Is it bad?”
Nora hesitated.
That hesitation frightened me more than a direct answer would have.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But there is something else. Your grandmother placed a restriction on a portion of the trust. I always assumed it related to business holdings, but tonight I reviewed the documents again.”
“And?”
“The restriction names David.”
My breath caught.
Nora continued, softer now. “Maya, your grandmother knew something about him. Something she never told you.”
The house seemed to grow colder around me.
I stood slowly, staring at the dark window above the sink. My reflection stared back, wrapped in an old sweater, eyes wide and tired and suddenly uncertain.
On the counter, my phone buzzed with another incoming call.
David.
I let it ring.
“Nora,” I whispered, “what did she know?”
There was a rustle of paper on the other end of the line.
Then Nora said the words that made the entire night tilt beneath my feet.
“The sealed file is labeled: Why David Carter married my granddaughter.”