Chapter 4: The Settlement Nobody Talked About
Vivian didn't answer right away.
She smoothed the front of her dress — an automatic gesture, the kind a person makes when they need their hands to be doing something other than shaking.
"This isn't the conversation for today," she said.
"You brought it up," Mei said.
"I shouldn't have."
"But you did." Mei kept her voice level.
"So finish it."
Vivian looked across the garden.
Preston was standing near the bar now, watching them from a distance, his expression unreadable.
A few guests had begun drifting toward the cocktail tables, pretending not to watch while watching everything.
"Dad's estate was complicated," Vivian said finally.
"You know that.
The business had debts.
The lawyers had to restructure everything before anything could be distributed."
"I know what you told me," Mei said.
"I'm asking what actually happened."
"That *is* what happened."
"Then why did the family lawyer retire six months after Dad passed?" Mei said.
"And why did you hire a new firm the same week?"
Vivian's chin lifted.
"People retire, Mei."
"He was fifty-three."
Silence.
A waiter passed between them with a tray of champagne.
Neither of them reached for a glass.
"The estate was valued at four point two million," Mei said quietly.
"Dad told me that himself, two months before he passed.
He sat me down at the kitchen table and he told me.
He said he wanted me to know, so nobody could tell me otherwise later." She paused.
"I received one hundred and forty thousand.
You told me the debts consumed the rest."
Vivian's jaw moved.
"There were debts."
"How much?"
"Mei—"
"How much, Vivian?"
"I don't have the exact figures—"
"Yes you do."
The words came out flat and certain, and Vivian heard them for what they were — not a question anymore.
Vivian stood up.
The movement was sharp, designed to signal that the conversation was over.
"I'm not going to sit here and be interrogated at my own wedding by my little sister who married a man she met at a bus stop and somehow ended up—"
"Sit down, Vivian."
It wasn't Mei who said it.
Daniel had come back.
He was standing three feet away, and he was not alone.
Beside him was an older woman in a grey blazer — composed, watchful, the kind of person who carries a notepad out of habit even when she isn't carrying one.
Mei didn't recognize her.
Vivian froze.
"This is Margaret Lau," Daniel said.
"She was your father's accountant for eleven years.
She reached out to me eight months ago with some concerns about a probate filing." He looked at Vivian steadily.
"I didn't know, at the time, that it was your father she was talking about.
I didn't make the connection until tonight."
Margaret Lau looked at Mei with an expression that held something careful and long-held — the look of someone who has been waiting for the right moment for a very long time.
"Your father came to see me," Margaret said, "four weeks before he passed.
He was worried.
He had changed his will the previous year to divide the estate equally between both daughters.
But someone had asked him to sign a document — a deed of variation — that would have redirected the bulk of the estate."
"He signed it?" Mei asked.
"He didn't know what he was signing," Margaret said.
"He had macular degeneration.
He couldn't read small print without his glasses, and his glasses weren't in the room when the document was presented to him." She paused.
"He called me afterward because something felt wrong.
He asked me to look into it."
Mei turned to look at her sister.
Vivian had not moved.
Her face was completely still now — not the theatrical stillness of someone performing composure, but the rigid stillness of someone who has just watched the ground give way beneath them and hasn't yet decided whether to run or fall.
"He died before we could take action," Margaret continued.
"And after he passed, I was told by the new firm that my services were no longer required and that any further contact would be considered interference in a closed probate matter." She reached into her blazer pocket and placed a folded document on the table.
"I kept copies of everything."
Preston appeared at Vivian's shoulder.
He'd crossed the lawn fast — too fast, the walk of a man who had been watching lips move from a distance and didn't like what he was seeing.
"Whatever this woman is telling you," he said to Daniel, his voice dropping into something harder, "I'd strongly recommend you consider the source.
Margaret Lau was dismissed from the estate for cause.
She has a personal grievance.
Anything she's shown you is—"
"I have the original deed," Margaret said simply.
"With the signature.
And I have the optometrist's report from the same month, documenting his vision loss." She looked at Preston.
"I also have the email chain between your personal address and the new probate firm, dated two days after the funeral."
Preston's hand went to his cufflink.
He adjusted it.
Didn't need to.
Adjusted it again.
"This is a legal matter," he said.
"Any claims would need to go through the proper—"
"I've already filed," Margaret said.
"Last Thursday.
The probate court accepted the application Friday morning."
The string lights above the garden flickered once — a brief, almost imperceptible dimming — as the catering staff somewhere inside switched a circuit.
In the half-second of near-darkness, Mei watched her sister's face.
Vivian was looking at Preston.
Not with anger.
Not with fear.
May you like
With something that looked, unmistakably, like blame.
And Preston, for the first time all evening, looked away first.
