Chapter 8: Daniel's Last Words
Three weeks later, Daniel called.
Mason was in his home office when the phone rang.
He looked at the name on the screen for a long moment, then picked up.
"My attorney told me not to do this," Daniel said.
"I'm doing it anyway."
Mason said nothing.
"I need you to know that I didn't plan for the children to be hurt." Daniel's voice was careful.
Measured.
The voice of someone who had rehearsed this.
"The Hargrove arrangement was presented to me as a protective structure.
A way to ensure the trust was managed correctly while you were still—"
"While I was still what?"
A pause.
"Struggling."
"You paid my housekeeper," Mason said.
"You paid the nanny.
You recruited them before Clarissa and I were married.
You came to my house while I was traveling and met with my wife in my office." He kept his voice even.
"Don't tell me what you were presented with.
Tell me what you knew."
Silence.
"Tell me what you knew, Daniel."
Another silence.
Longer.
"I knew it wasn't entirely clean," Daniel said finally.
"I told myself the outcome was right even if the process wasn't."
"The outcome was that your brother's children would be in separate boarding schools and you would control four million dollars of their inheritance for sixteen years."
"Mason—"
"Was Sarah's death part of the plan?
Or did you just see an opportunity when it happened?"
The silence that followed was different from the others.
It went on long enough that Mason thought the call might have dropped.
"That's not fair," Daniel said.
"I know you loved her.
I'm asking you a direct question."
"No." Daniel's voice cracked slightly.
"No.
That was not — I would never.
She was—" He stopped.
"No."
Mason believed him.
He wasn't sure why that made it worse.
"The attorney general has your name in the Hargrove Group's internal records," Mason said.
"Ruth tells me the criminal exposure is significant.
I can't help you with that.
But I want you to hear this from me directly, not through lawyers."
"What?"
"You stood at Sarah's grave with me.
You held Ben's hand at the funeral because he was too small to understand what was happening and he needed someone to hold onto." Mason's voice was steady.
"I don't know how you went from that moment to this one.
I don't know what they offered you or what you told yourself to make it acceptable.
But you chose it.
Every step.
You chose it."
Daniel didn't speak.
"Don't call me again," Mason said.
He ended the call.
He sat in the office for a while.
The house was quiet.
The children were in the garden — he could hear Ava's voice through the window, narrating something to herself the way she did when she played alone.
He looked at the wall where the family photographs had been rehung.
He had done it the morning after Clarissa left, before the children woke up.
Every photograph of Sarah.
The one from their first holiday.
The one from Ben's second birthday.
The one someone had taken without them noticing at a Sunday market, Sarah laughing at something Mason had said, her hand in his.
They were all back where they belonged.
He heard the garden door open.
Ben's footsteps in the hallway, then Ava's.
"Dad?" Ben called.
"In here."
Ben appeared in the doorway.
"Ava wants to know if we can have the photographs of Mum in our rooms too.
Not just the hallway."
Mason looked at his son.
"Tell her yes," he said.
"Tell her she can have whichever ones she wants."
Ben nodded and turned to go.
"Ben."
His son looked back.
"I'm sorry it took me this long to see what was happening in this house."
Ben was quiet for a moment.
May you like
"You see it now," he said.
Then he went back to his sister.
