I smiled.
“I may be old,” I said, “but I still know how to set an alarm.”
The police found Thomas in the study with a locked filing cabinet pried open.
He claimed he was retrieving personal documents.
Unfortunately for him, the documents in his hand belonged to the Whitmore-Ellis Trust.
Unfortunately for him again, the temporary order had specifically barred him from removing or destroying any records.
Unfortunately for him most of all, Diane had installed a camera in the study two years earlier after noticing certain trust ledgers had been moved.
When the officers escorted Thomas out, he shouted loud enough for Henry to hear from the driveway.
“She’s poisoning all of you against me!”
Henry later told me the youngest officer had looked at Thomas and said, “Sir, please stop talking.”
That evening, I sat alone in Rebecca’s guest room and finally allowed myself to shake.
Not cry.
Shake.
There is a difference.
Crying is release.
Shaking is the body admitting it has survived something the mind is still trying to understand.
Rebecca knocked softly.
“Mom?”
“Come in.”
She entered carrying a tray with soup, crackers, and one small slice of lemon cake.
“You never eat when you’re upset,” she said. “But you’ll eat cake out of spite.”
I laughed.
It hurt my stitches.
Then I cried after all.
Rebecca sat beside me and held my hand the way I had held hers when she was small and feverish.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For not seeing it.”
I looked at my daughter, my beautiful, tired daughter who had spent years trying to please a father who moved the finish line every time she got close.
“You were trained not to see it,” I said.
Her face crumpled.
“Michael says he wants to testify.”
“He may have to.”
“What about me?”