Chapter 3: Everything Megan Knew
Daniel kept the phone on speaker and said nothing.
Rachel filled the silence herself.
"Whatever Megan told you, she doesn't have the full picture.
She only ever sees one side of things.
You know how she exaggerates."
"She said this wasn't the first time," Daniel said.
"Daniel—"
"Christmas, Rachel.
My mother fell on the step at Christmas.
You told me she'd been drinking."
A pause.
Then, carefully: "She had had wine."
"One glass," I said from the bed.
I hadn't meant to speak, but the words came out anyway.
"I had one glass with dinner."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"Is Mom there?" Rachel asked.
Her voice had changed.
Flatter.
Calculating.
"Yes," Daniel said.
"Of course she is." A short, dry sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Of course you're listening to her version."
Daniel's hand tightened around the phone.
"I'm going to call you back."
He ended the call before she could answer.
We sat in the small hospital room.
The monitor beside my bed beeped softly.
Daniel stared at the far wall with the look of a man trying to count backwards from something he couldn't name.
"How many times?" he finally said.
"I don't know," I told him honestly.
"I didn't always know it was her."
He turned to look at me.
"What do you mean you didn't know?"
"The step at Christmas.
Last Easter, when I spilled the gravy — I thought I'd caught the edge of the tablecloth.
The summer before that, when I tripped on the back patio." I stopped.
"I thought I was becoming clumsy.
I'm sixty-eight.
I thought it was just…
age."
Daniel's face did something I hadn't seen since he was a child.
It crumpled at the center, just briefly, before he pulled it back.
His phone buzzed.
Megan.
He answered immediately.
"I need to know everything," he said.
"Not some of it.
Everything."
Megan's voice was unsteady.
"I've been trying to tell you for a year.
Every time I tried, Rachel found a way to make sure we weren't in the same room."
"Tell me now."
A long breath on the other end of the line.
"It started before Christmas.
Maybe longer — I'm not sure.
But I was there in October when your mom came to visit.
Rachel made a comment at the table about how Eleanor probably shouldn't have that second cup of coffee because of her heart medication.
Your mom doesn't take heart medication, Daniel.
I know that.
But everyone at the table looked at her like maybe she did.
Like maybe she was hiding something." Megan paused.
"It was so smooth.
That's what scared me.
It was so smooth."
Daniel said nothing.
"Then at Christmas, I was near the side door when your mom went out.
I saw Rachel move toward the step right before Eleanor went down.
It was fast.
Just a small thing with her foot.
I told myself I imagined it." Her voice broke slightly.
"I've been telling myself that for six months."
"You didn't imagine it," Daniel said.
"No.
I know that now."
He stood up and walked to the window.
Outside, the parking lot was ordinary and bright and completely indifferent to what was happening inside this room.
"Is there anything else?" he asked.
Megan hesitated.
That hesitation lasted just long enough to be its own kind of answer.
"There's something Rachel said to me last month," Megan said slowly.
"About your mother's house."
Daniel turned from the window.
"What about it?"
"She asked me if I knew whether Eleanor had updated her will recently."
The monitor beside my bed kept beeping.
Steady and small and very loud in the silence that followed.
Daniel looked at me.
I looked at him.
May you like
Neither of us spoke.
Neither of us needed to.
