Chapter 8: The Woman at the Table
I stood on the front step for a long moment with the photograph in my hand.
Alex came up behind me.
He looked at it over my shoulder.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"The man she's with."
"No." He took the photograph carefully by the edge.
"But I know that folder."
I looked at him.
"That's a legal folder.
The tab on the side — that's how my father's attorney organized everything.
I used to see them on his desk when I was a kid." He turned the photograph over and read the four words.
Then he read them again.
"Someone sent this deliberately.
Someone who knows what it means."
"Or someone who wants us to think they know."
"Either way, they know where we live."
We went inside.
Alex photographed the envelope and the note and the photograph itself, then sealed everything in a zip bag from the kitchen drawer.
I made coffee.
Neither of us sat down.
"If that folder is what I think it is," Alex said, "she's been doing this since before my father died."
"What do you mean?"
"My father changed his will eight months before he passed.
I always thought it was his decision.
He told me it was his decision." He set the zip bag on the counter.
"But if she was meeting with his attorney separately — without him knowing—"
"You think she influenced it."
"I think she's capable of it." He looked at the bag.
"I think she's been capable of it for a very long time and I chose not to see it."
The coffee finished brewing.
I poured two cups.
Set one in front of him.
"We need to find out who sent this," I said.
"I have an idea," he said.
"There's one person who might know.
My father's old assistant — a woman named June.
She stayed with the firm after he died.
She never liked my mother, but she was too loyal to my father to say anything while he was alive." He picked up his cup.
"She retired two years ago.
I have her number somewhere."
He found it in an old contact list on his laptop.
He called from the kitchen while I stood by the window watching the street.
June answered on the third ring.
The conversation lasted eleven minutes.
I heard Alex's side of it — the careful questions, the long pauses while he listened, the single moment where he set his cup down on the counter very slowly and didn't pick it up again.
When he hung up, he stood with his back to me for a moment.
"Alex."
He turned around.
"June sent the photograph," he said.
"She's had it for four years.
She took it herself, from across the restaurant.
She didn't know what to do with it then." He paused.
"She said she's been waiting for someone to be ready to use it."
"What was in the folder?"
"A draft.
A version of my father's will that was never filed.
In it, the trust goes directly to me at thirty-five — not forty-two.
No administrator.
No Richard." He looked at me steadily.
"My mother met with the attorney twice without my father's knowledge.
The final will — the one that was filed — was the third version."
The room was very still.
"She delayed your inheritance by seven years," I said.
"And kept Richard in control of it.
Richard, who she's had in her corner since the divorce." He picked up his cup again.
Looked at it.
Set it back down.
"She didn't just manage this house.
She managed everything.
For decades."
I thought about what she'd said at the dining room table.
*Everything we built.*
She hadn't meant it as a memory.
She'd meant it as a warning.
"June will testify?" I asked.
"She said she's been waiting to," he said.
"She said — " He stopped.
Cleared his throat.
"She said she's sorry she didn't do it sooner.
That she should have done it when my father was still alive."
His voice was steady.
His eyes were not.
I crossed the kitchen and stood next to him.
I didn't say anything.
Sometimes there is nothing to say that is better than being close.
After a moment, he reached over and took my hand — the bandaged one, gently — and held it without squeezing.
"She's not going to stop," he said.
"No," I agreed.
"But neither are we."
His phone lit up on the counter.
A message from an unknown number — different from the one that had called in the car.
*Tell your husband I'd like to meet.
I have more than a photograph.
May you like
— J*
June hadn't finished.
