Chapter 5: Let Him Come
Grant called at noon.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with Daniel's research spread in front of me when my regular phone lit up.
I looked at the screen, then at Daniel.
He gave a small nod.
I answered.
"Mara." Grant's voice was controlled.
Warm, even.
The voice he used when he wanted something.
"I think we need to talk.
In person.
Just the two of us."
"All right," I said.
A beat of silence.
He had expected resistance.
"Today?" he asked.
"Come here.
Four o'clock."
Another pause.
"You're sure?"
"I'll have Ellie at my aunt's by three-thirty.
We can talk privately."
"Good." The warmth in his voice shifted into something that thought it was relief.
"Good, Mara.
I think once you hear everything, you'll understand.
There's a lot you don't know."
"I'm sure there is," I said.
I ended the call.
Daniel looked at me across the table.
"You're letting him into the house."
"I want to see his face when he realizes what I know." I turned back to the documents.
"And I want him on record."
Daniel reached into his jacket and placed a small flat device on the table.
"Already arranged.
Audio and visual.
The living room, the kitchen, and the front hallway."
I nodded.
"What did you find on Dr.
Crane?"
"Phillip Crane received a consulting payment of eighteen thousand dollars from a medical advisory firm called Lorne Health Associates eleven months ago." Daniel slid a printed page across the table.
"Lorne Health Associates is registered to Viveca Lorne."
I looked at the page.
"So Grant paid his own doctor to sign a statement calling me an unfit mother."
"Effectively, yes."
"And Sasha?"
"Grant transferred forty thousand dollars to his sister's personal account seven months ago.
Described in the memo line as a family loan."
I set the paper down.
"He paid his sister to lie about me," I said.
"The timing is consistent with that conclusion."
I thought about Sasha — her voice at Christmas dinner, the way she had hugged me when my father died.
*I'm so sorry, Mara.
He loved you so much.*
"She knew," I said.
Not a question.
"She knew."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The garden looked different in daylight — ordinary, calm, the kind of yard a child could run around in.
Ellie had left a plastic bucket near the flower bed.
"When Grant gets here," I said, "I want him to feel completely in control for the first ten minutes.
I want him to believe I'm confused and scared and looking for a way to make this easier."
"And then?"
I turned away from the window.
"Then I'm going to ask him about my father's life insurance policy."
Daniel was quiet for a moment.
"That's a significant escalation."
"I know." I picked up the photograph from the table — my father's handwriting, four words.
"He needs to say something on that recording that he can't walk back."
At three twenty-five, I buckled Ellie into her car seat, drove her to my Aunt Cecelia's house four miles away, and kissed her forehead at the door.
"Be good," I told her.
"I'm always good," she said seriously.
I drove home.
Grant's car was already in the driveway when I arrived.
He was leaning against it with his hands in his pockets, and he smiled when he saw me — the full, easy smile I had once believed was real.
"You look tired," he said.
"I didn't sleep much," I said.
"Come inside."
May you like
He followed me through the front door.
The recording started the moment he crossed the threshold.
