Chapter 6: What Victoria Said
Daniel was gone for forty minutes.
Aunt Ruth ordered coffee from room service and we sat, the three of us — Aunt Ruth, Chloe, and me — in a quiet that nobody tried to fill with words.
Chloe kept her phone in her hands but didn't look at it.
Once, it lit up with her mother's name.
She turned it face-down on the cushion beside her.
When Daniel came back, he closed the door behind him and stood in the middle of the room.
His face told me that whatever Victoria had said, it had not been the right thing.
"She admitted it," he said.
Chloe closed her eyes.
"She said it began as a short-term measure.
She needed to cover a debt she had accumulated without my knowledge — investments made in her own name that had failed.
She intended to repay the trust.
She said she had a plan." He paused.
"She had no plan."
"What else?" Aunt Ruth said.
"She said my mother would never have known the difference.
That she was too ill to understand the finances by that point." He sat down.
He sat like the weight had finally reached him.
"She said I should have trusted her more.
That this happened because I was never present enough to manage things myself."
The room went very still.
"She blamed you," I said.
I didn't mean to say it out loud.
"Yes." He looked at me.
"She is very good at that."
Chloe stood up.
Her voice was tightly controlled.
"Where is she now?"
"She's packing."
"You asked her to leave?"
"I told her I was calling Thomas.
She decided to pack on her own."
Chloe went to the window.
She stood where Daniel had stood an hour ago, looking out at the same view.
"She told me last night," Chloe said, "that you were trying to use Eleanor to embarrass her.
That Ruth was helping you orchestrate it.
She said the envelope was fabricated." She stopped.
"I knew she was lying.
I think I've known she was lying about a lot of things for a long time.
I just—" She stopped again.
"You just didn't want to know," Aunt Ruth said.
"No.
I didn't."
"That's understandable," Aunt Ruth said.
"She's your mother.
But you know now."
Chloe turned from the window.
She looked at me and there was something raw in her expression — not the brittle contempt of the night before, but something younger and more honest than I had ever seen from her.
"She told me your mother left you nothing when she passed," Chloe said.
"She said your father had to take you in out of obligation.
She said you had always resented us for having more."
"My mother left a small savings account," I said.
"It was for my education.
I used it when I was nineteen." I kept my voice level.
"Your mother knew that.
Your mother was in the room when my father told me about it."
Chloe absorbed that.
"I was thirteen when your father married mine," I said.
"I wasn't jealous of you.
I was grieving.
There's a difference."
Daniel looked at the floor.
He looked like a man reading a document he could not stop reading, line by line, no matter what it cost him.
"She turned us against each other," Chloe said.
Quietly.
As if she were still working it out.
"Yes," I said.
"For years."
"Yes."
Chloe walked back to her chair and sat down.
She pressed her fingers against her forehead.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
She asked it to no one in particular and all of us at once.
Daniel looked up.
"Thomas is filing the complaint this afternoon.
After that, it is no longer in my hands." He glanced at me.
"There is one more thing.
Thomas says the trust, had it not been touched, would have had a residual sum at the close of your grandmother's estate.
It was designated to pass to her grandchildren."
I looked at him.
"To me."
"To you.
And if the improper withdrawals are recovered through civil proceedings, that sum — or a portion of it — may be restored." He held my gaze.
"I should have been paying closer attention, Eleanor.
To the finances.
To this family.
To you."
I had waited a long time to hear something like that.
I didn't cry.
I wasn't ready to cry yet.
But I felt it somewhere behind my sternum, that careful release — like the first breath after a long time underwater.
Then my phone buzzed on the table.
A number I didn't recognise.
I picked it up and read the message.
My hand went still.
I looked up at my father.
"Victoria just sent me a message," I said.
"From her phone?"
"From a number I don't have." I turned the screen so he could read it.
It said: *Drop this.
May you like
You have no idea what I still have on your father.
Walk away or I'll use it.*
