Chapter 4: The Name at the Bottom of the Page
I read the name three times.
Margaret Voss.
Garrett's mother.
I had sat at her dining table every Christmas for three years.
She had called me *dear*.
She had given me a pearl bracelet on my first wedding anniversary and told me I was exactly what the family needed.
"She sourced it," I said.
"Margaret sourced the compound."
"She has a background in pharmaceutical chemistry.
Before she married Harlan, she worked for a research firm in Edinburgh.
The compound isn't commercially available — it had to be synthesized." Tobias watched me carefully.
"She made it herself."
I set the paper down on the ledge.
"She sat across from me at dinner and asked about my health.
Every time.
*You look tired, Rosalind.
Are you sleeping enough?
You should let Garrett take better care of you.*"
"She was monitoring the progress."
The word landed like something physical.
"We need to move," Tobias said.
"We can't stay here.
Garrett will report the accident to the police within the next few hours — he has to, or the d3ath certificate process stalls.
Once there's an official report, our window gets smaller."
"Where do we go?"
"I have a place.
I've had it for four years." He stood, and watching him stand — watching him move with complete ease on legs I had believed were useless for fifteen years — still sent a strange vertigo through me.
"A flat in Savannah, registered under a name that has no connection to either of us.
I set it up after I got the first lab results."
"You've been planning this."
"I've been preparing for the possibility that they would move before I had everything I needed." He picked up the waterproof case.
"I didn't have everything I needed."
"But we're alive."
"We're alive," he agreed.
"That changes the timeline."
We moved through the maintenance gap and followed the concrete base of the pier eastward, staying below the road line.
The night was clear and cold.
My shoes were still wet.
I focused on the sound of my own breathing and tried not to think about the kitchen doorway and the warm milk and the smile.
Tobias had a car parked half a mile east, down a service road behind a boat storage facility.
An old dark blue sedan, nothing memorable.
He had the keys in a magnetic box under the rear wheel arch.
We drove in silence for the first ten minutes.
Then I said: "Penelope."
"What about her?"
"She's pregnant.
She was standing on that shore watching me dr0wn and she is carrying a child." I stared at the road ahead.
"Is the baby Garrett's?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"The relationship started approximately fourteen months into your marriage."
Fourteen months.
We had been trying for a child of our own at fourteen months.
I remembered the appointments.
I remembered Garrett holding my hand in the waiting room, his face arranged into the precise expression of a concerned husband.
"Did Penelope know what he was doing to me?" I asked.
"She sourced a second batch of the compound eight months ago.
She made the contact herself." Tobias kept his eyes on the road.
"She knew."
My half sister.
My father's daughter from his first marriage.
She had always been distant — cool in the way some people are when they feel they were given less than they deserved.
I had tried, over the years.
Dinners.
Birthday calls.
An invitation to be part of the wedding that she declined with a two-line message.
I had told myself she simply needed more time.
"She wasn't distant because she resented me," I said.
"No."
"She was distant because she was already involved with Garrett."
"The relationship may have started even before he was introduced to you.
I haven't been able to confirm the exact timeline." He paused.
"I'm sorry, Rosalind.
I know she's your family."
"She's not my family." The words came out quietly.
"She stopped being my family the moment she handed him that compound."
Tobias said nothing.
The lights of Savannah appeared on the horizon.
"We need a lawyer," I said.
"Someone who has no connection to the Voss family.
Someone who can look at those transfer documents and tell me exactly what Garrett filed and what can be challenged."
"I have a name.
A woman named Clare Ashford.
She handled maritime law in Charleston for twenty years before she moved to Savannah.
She has no ties to Harlan's network — I checked."
"You checked."
"I've been checking a lot of things for a long time."
I looked at my brother's profile in the dark of the car.
The man I had pushed in a wheelchair through airports and hospital corridors.
The man I had apologized to, privately, for every moment I thought his life had been diminished by what happened to our parents.
"Tobias," I said.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly."
"All right."
"Is there anything else you haven't told me?
Anything else you've been holding back because you thought it would protect me?"
He was quiet for long enough that my stomach tightened.
"There is one thing," he said finally.
"Tell me."
"The shipyard isn't the only asset in the transfer documents." He kept his voice level.
"Garrett also filed a claim against the life insurance policy Dad took out before he d!ed.
The policy that names you as sole beneficiary." He glanced at me once.
"The claim is contingent on your d3ath being ruled accidental."
The number on that policy was not small.
Our father had built it specifically to protect the shipyard operations if anything happened to him.
"How much?" I asked.
Tobias told me.
I turned and looked out the window at the dark water moving past in the distance.
Garrett hadn't just wanted the shipyard.
May you like
He had wanted everything.
And somewhere in Baltimore, his father was almost certainly already waiting for a phone call that confirmed it was done.
