Chapter 6: Edinburgh, 2:47 p.m.
My sister Ruth was waiting at the arrivals gate with a paper cup of tea she'd somehow kept warm and a look on her face that said she had been rehearsing what not to say for the past hour.
She hugged me first.
Then she crouched down and hugged Isla, who immediately told her that the plane had pretzels but no good crisps, and Nora, who said nothing but leaned into Ruth's shoulder for a moment longer than usual.
"Car's just outside," Ruth said.
"Ten minutes and you'll see the flat."
The flat was on the third floor of a sandstone building two streets from a park with a duck pond.
Ruth had put fresh flowers on the kitchen table and made up both girls' beds with the duvets they'd chosen themselves from a catalogue she'd posted to us three weeks earlier.
Isla's was covered in small yellow suns.
Nora's was a deep, quiet blue.
Isla ran to the window to look at the street.
Nora sat on the edge of her bed and ran one hand across the duvet.
"It's the right one," she said.
Not to me.
Just to herself.
I stood in the doorway and watched her for a moment.
Then Ruth appeared at my shoulder with the tea, which was still somehow warm.
"Drink it," she said.
"Then tell me everything."
We sat at the kitchen table while the girls explored.
I told her about Carla.
About the accounts.
About the disclosure order my solicitor had filed forty minutes after our flight took off.
Ruth listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her.
When I finished, she wrapped both hands around her own cup.
"How much?" she asked.
I told her the number.
She set her cup down.
"Lena."
"I know."
"That's not — that's not a mistake.
That's not oversight.
That's—"
"I know what it is."
She looked at me carefully.
"How long have you known?"
"Carla called in February.
I've known since February."
"You sat across from him this morning knowing that."
"Yes."
Ruth was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "Are you all right?"
It was such a simple question.
After everything — the eleven years, the midnight messages, the morning in the conference room, the flight, the flat with the yellow-sun duvet — it was such a simple, direct question that I didn't have a prepared answer for it.
"I think so," I said.
"I think I will be."
"The girls?"
"Nora knows more than she lets on.
Isla is resilient in ways that frighten me sometimes." I looked toward the hallway.
"They'll be fine.
I'll make sure they're fine."
Ruth reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
We sat like that for a while.
Then my phone rang.
I looked at the screen.
It was Preston's number.
I had not changed it yet.
It still had the small photo I'd assigned to it years ago — the two of us at a friend's wedding, laughing at something off-camera, before everything.
I stared at it through two full rings.
Ruth watched me.
I answered.
"Preston."
"Lena." His voice sounded different.
Not lighter, the way it had in the conference room.
Heavier.
May you like
"I need to tell you something.
Before you hear it from anyone else."
