Chapter 4: Your Father Was a Thorough Man
David pressed his palm flat against the door.
"Mum." His voice had changed.
The hardness was gone.
Something younger had taken its place.
"What else is there?"
"Sit down first," Margaret said.
"Both of you."
"I'm not sitting down in the hallway like a child," Sarah said.
"Then stand.
It makes no difference to me."
Sarah looked at David.
He wasn't looking back.
He was staring at the door with an expression she hadn't seen on him before.
Something between dread and guilt.
"David." She touched his arm.
"She's doing this for effect.
Don't let her—"
"Sarah." He said her name quietly.
"Stop talking for a moment."
She went still.
He turned back to the door.
"What else did Dad leave, Mum?"
Margaret was quiet for a moment.
Then the sound of a drawer opening.
The soft rustle of paper.
"Your father had a heart attack eighteen months before he passed," she said.
"You remember."
"Of course I remember."
"After that, he updated everything.
The deed had already been in my name for years.
But after the heart attack, he also updated his will.
And he added a separate letter.
A private letter, addressed to me, explaining his reasons."
"Reasons for what?" David's voice was careful now.
Each word placed deliberately.
"Reasons for why he left the house to me and not to you.
Not because he didn't love you.
He did.
Deeply.
But he had watched, in those last few years, how easily you allowed yourself to be led."
"Led." David repeated the word flatly.
"His word.
Not mine."
Sarah's face tightened.
"He meant me.
He was blaming me."
"He was observing what he saw," Margaret said.
"He wasn't a cruel man.
He didn't write it cruelly.
But he wrote it honestly."
"I want to read that letter," David said.
"I know you do."
"Mum—"
"It was written to me, David.
It's mine.
I've never shown it to anyone.
I won't be showing it today either."
Sarah made a sharp sound — half laugh, half disbelief.
"So you're using a letter no one can see as some kind of weapon?
That's convenient, isn't it?"
"I'm not using it as anything," Margaret said.
"You asked why.
I told you why.
Whether you believe me is your business."
David turned away from the door.
He walked three steps down the hallway and stood with his back to both of them, one hand on the wall.
Sarah watched him.
She could see it happening — the doubt moving through him, rearranging things.
She didn't like it.
"This is ridiculous," she said, louder.
"David, we are not going to be manipulated by a woman hiding in a locked room waving old paperwork.
We live here.
We've lived here for three years.
Whatever is or isn't on that deed, the law doesn't just—"
"Actually," said a voice from the bottom of the stairs, "it rather does."
Both of them turned.
A man stood at the foot of the staircase.
Older.
Silver-haired.
A coat still on, a briefcase in one hand.
He looked at them with the steady, unhurried calm of someone who had been in difficult rooms before and found them not particularly difficult.
"Gerald Firth," he said.
"Margaret called me this morning.
I let myself in.
She left the front door unlocked."
Sarah stared at him.
"You're the solicitor."
"I am."
"She planned this," Sarah said, spinning toward the door.
"She planned all of this."
"She asked me to be present," Gerald said, setting his briefcase on the bottom stair.
"Given the nature of the conversation she anticipated, I thought it was sensible.
Margaret is the sole legal owner of this property.
That is not in dispute.
What I'd like to discuss, calmly and clearly, is what happens next."
David had turned back around.
He looked at Gerald.
Then at the floor.
"What does happen next?" he said.
His voice was quiet.
Almost a boy's voice.
Gerald looked at the locked door.
Then at David.
May you like
Then at Sarah.
"That," he said, "rather depends on what Sarah does with what she's about to be told."
