Chapter 8: What Was Done to Her Mother
Mei sat down.
She didn't choose to.
Her legs simply made the decision for her, and she found herself in the kitchen chair with the phone pressed to her ear and the morning light coming through the window at the wrong angle, the way light does when the world has just shifted slightly on its axis.
"Say that again," she said.
"Your mother's estate," Margaret said.
"She passed four years before your father.
Her assets were supposed to transfer directly to your father under the terms of their joint will.
A property in Surrey.
A savings account.
Some jewelry of significant value." A pause.
"The property transferred correctly.
The savings account transferred correctly.
But the jewelry — there's no record of it entering your father's estate inventory."
"He would have listed it," Mei said.
"He kept everything.
He was meticulous."
"I know.
I worked with him for eleven years.
Which is why I looked twice when I didn't see it." Margaret's voice was careful.
Precise.
The voice of someone delivering information they have checked three times before speaking.
"I found a receipt.
A private sale, conducted through a small auction house in Kensington, dated eight weeks after your mother passed.
The jewelry was sold as a single lot.
The proceeds — approximately sixty-four thousand pounds — were deposited into an account I didn't recognize."
"Whose account?"
"That's what I'm still working to confirm," Margaret said.
"But the account was opened six months before your mother passed.
And the name on it is not your father's."
Mei stared at the table.
"Preston," she said.
"The account predates his relationship with Vivian by two years," Margaret said.
"Which means he was connected to your family before any of us knew he existed."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"How?" Mei said.
"How did he know us?
How did he get close enough to—"
"I don't have that answer yet.
But I have a name.
The auction house listed a representative who brought the jewelry in for sale.
Not Preston directly.
Someone acting on behalf of the estate, they were told." A pause.
"The name they have on file is Vivian Hale.
Except at the time, she wasn't Vivian Hale.
She was still Vivian Liang."
The silence stretched out.
"She was twenty-three," Mei said finally.
"When Mum died.
She was twenty-three years old."
"I know."
"She couldn't have — she wouldn't have—"
"Mei." Margaret's voice was gentle but firm.
"I'm not telling you what she did or didn't know.
I'm telling you what the record shows.
What it means is something you and she will need to work out."
Mei ended the call and sat for a long time without moving.
Daniel found her there twenty minutes later.
He read her face and didn't ask.
He sat down across from her and waited.
"It goes back further," she said.
"Than we thought."
She told him.
He listened without interrupting — a quality she had loved in him from the beginning, the ability to hold difficult information without immediately trying to fix it.
When she finished, he said: "Do you want to speak to Vivian today, or do you need more time?"
"I don't know if I want to speak to Vivian ever again," Mei said.
"But I think I have to."
---
Vivian arrived at two o'clock.
She had changed out of the wedding dress — she was wearing plain dark trousers and a grey jumper, and without the armor of the occasion she looked smaller.
Not diminished.
Just human.
The kind of human that is visible only when everything else has been stripped away.
She sat across from Mei at the kitchen table.
Daniel made tea and then left the room.
The door didn't close all the way.
Mei didn't ask him to close it.
"Margaret called you," Vivian said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
Vivian looked at her hands.
"I was going to tell you myself.
I was trying to find the words since last night."
"Tell me now."
Vivian looked up.
Her eyes were dry, but the skin around them was swollen in the way that happens after a long night of private crying.
"I was twenty-three," she said.
"Mum had just died and I was — I was not in a good place.
I'd met Preston at a charity event three months before.
He was charming and attentive and he made me feel like the most important person in the room, which was something I desperately needed to feel." She stopped.
"He asked me about the estate.
I thought he was just being practical.
He said he knew someone who could help manage things, avoid probate delays, make sure the assets were handled efficiently.
I thought he was helping."
"The jewelry," Mei said.
"He told me it would be better to liquidate it before it entered the formal estate process.
That there would be tax implications otherwise.
That Dad would get more in the end if we handled it quietly." Vivian's voice was very flat.
"I was twenty-three and I had just lost my mother and a man I trusted told me it was the right thing to do, so I did it."
"And the money?"
"He said it was going into a holding account until the estate was settled.
That he would transfer it to Dad once everything was finalized." She pressed her lips together.
"I asked him about it six months later.
He said there had been complications.
Then I asked again a year later and he said it had been handled.
And then—" She stopped.
"And then I stopped asking.
Because I didn't want to know.
Because some part of me already knew that if I looked too closely, I would see something I couldn't come back from."
Mei looked at her sister.
"You were afraid," Mei said.
"I was a coward," Vivian said.
"There's a difference."
The tea sat between them, steaming.
"He came back," Vivian said.
"Preston.
Years later.
He said he'd been abroad, that he'd thought about me, that he wanted to make things right.
I thought—" She laughed, a short, broken sound.
"I thought it was love.
I thought he came back because of me." She shook her head.
"He came back because Dad was getting older and there was more to take."
"And you let him in," Mei said.
"I let him in," Vivian said.
"Yes."
They sat with that.
Outside, a car passed.
A bird landed on the garden wall and then left.
"I'm going to cooperate with Margaret fully," Vivian said.
"Everything I know.
Every conversation.
Every document.
I'm going to give them all of it, even the parts that make me look — " She stopped.
"Even the parts that are true."
"That won't undo it," Mei said.
"No," Vivian said.
"I know."
Mei looked at her sister — really looked at her, the way Daniel had looked at her in the garden the evening before.
Taking in the grey jumper and the bare hands and the face that had finally stopped performing anything.
"I'm not ready to forgive you," Mei said.
"I want you to know that.
What you did yesterday — the microphone, the dress code, all of it — that was years of something, Vivian.
Not just yesterday."
"I know."
"And what you did with Mum's jewelry — I don't know yet what I think about that.
I need time."
"I know," Vivian said again.
"But I'm not going to let you lose everything to him," Mei said.
"If cooperating with Margaret protects you legally, then you cooperate.
Whatever they need.
Do you understand?"
Vivian looked at her.
"Why?" she said.
"After everything—"
"Because you're my sister," Mei said.
"And because Dad would have wanted me to." She picked up her tea.
"That's all.
Don't make it more than that right now."
Vivian nodded.
Her chin was trembling, but she held it still.
May you like
"All right," she said quietly.
"All right."
