Chapter 7: What Sabrina Did Next
Whatever Julian's letter had opened in Garrick, Sabrina saw it happening and did not like it.
She stood up.
"This is a setup." Her voice was tight, controlled, but a thread of panic ran beneath it.
"Someone has been manipulating Elena for months — feeding her documents, feeding her a story — and now this attorney shows up like some kind of—"
"Sabrina," Garrick said.
"No." She turned on Douglas.
"Who else has copies of these documents?
Who did you send them to?
Because whatever you're planning, we have rights here.
Garrick has rights.
He was a joint account holder—"
"He was not," Douglas said.
"He was granted temporary access.
That is a different legal instrument."
"We'll see what our attorney says about that."
"You're welcome to consult one," Douglas said, with the same unhurried calm.
"I'd recommend it."
Sabrina turned to me.
She was composed now, in the way that people are composed when they've decided to try a different door.
"Elena." Her voice dropped.
Softer.
Almost kind.
"I know this year has been devastating for you.
Losing Julian, being alone in this house — I cannot imagine.
And I know Garrick and I haven't always handled things the way we should have." She sat back down, leaning slightly forward.
"But dragging this into a legal situation will destroy your relationship with your son.
Is that really what you want?
On top of everything else you've already lost?"
The room waited.
Clara's hand found mine under the edge of the sofa cushion and pressed once, firmly.
"Sabrina," I said, "I want you to think very carefully about what you just said to me."
She held my gaze.
Patient.
Certain she had found the lever.
"You told me," I continued, "that I am alone, grieving, and easily manipulated.
You told me that protecting myself legally would cost me my son.
And you told me that on top of everything I've already lost, I should absorb one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars in theft and say nothing." I paused.
"Does that sound like concern to you?
Because it sounds like a threat."
Sabrina's mouth opened.
Closed.
"For the record," Douglas said, without looking up from his documents, "this conversation is being noted."
"You're recording this?" Garrick said.
"I'm taking notes," Douglas said pleasantly.
"I'm an attorney.
It's what we do."
Garrick looked at Sabrina.
Something passed between them — a wordless negotiation, rapid and practiced, the kind that couples develop when they've covered for each other many times before.
Then Garrick looked at me.
"Mom," he said.
"The money — I can explain where it went.
All of it.
Some of it was Sabrina's idea and some of it was mine and I know that doesn't make it right, but I need you to hear the full story before this goes any further."
It was the first honest sentence he had spoken since he walked into the kitchen that morning.
"I'm listening," I said.
But Sabrina stood up again.
"Garrick, don't."
He looked at his wife.
Then he looked at his hands.
Then he looked at his father's letter, still face-down on his knee.
"Sit down, Sabrina," he said quietly.
She sat.
"The condo doesn't exist," he said.
"We've been here for fourteen months.
The money we were supposedly saving — it went to Sabrina's credit card debt.
Before we moved in, before Dad p@ssed, she had accumulated nearly eighty thousand dollars in debt that I didn't know about until six months into the marriage." He stopped.
Swallowed.
"I panicked.
I didn't want to tell you.
I didn't want to tell Dad.
So I started covering it from the joint account, a little at a time, and then it wasn't a little anymore and I didn't know how to stop."
The room held its breath.
"The purse," Clara said quietly, from beside me.
"The twenty-five-hundred-dollar purse.
While Elena was paying for your groceries."
Garrick didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Sabrina's jaw was tight.
She was staring at the middle distance with the focused expression of a person rapidly reconstructing their position.
"How much of the one hundred and thirty-six thousand went to her debt?" Douglas asked.
"Most of it," Garrick said.
"Maybe a hundred thousand.
The rest—" he stopped, "I'm not proud of the rest."
"What's the rest?" I asked.
He looked at me.
The raw, young thing was still there in his face, and now it was mixed with something that looked like it had been waiting a long time to come out.
"We were going to ask you to sign the house into a joint trust," he said.
"Sabrina found a lawyer who said it was possible.
The plan was to wait until you were more—" he stopped himself.
May you like
"More what?" Clara said.
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had heard since Julian's funeral.
