Chapter 8: Mason at the Door
Three days later, Mason called.
I almost didn't answer.
Then I thought about the binder, and the fence, and the way Teresa had screamed at him to keep his mouth shut — and I picked up.
"I need to talk to you," he said.
"In person."
We met at a diner on the east side, a place neither of us had any history with.
Mason was already there when I arrived, sitting in a corner booth with a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.
He looked like he hadn't slept since Friday.
"I didn't know what was in the binder," he said, before I'd even sat down.
"Mason."
"I'm serious.
She told me it was paperwork from your father's estate.
Old documents she needed to keep somewhere safe in case you ever disputed the inheritance." He wrapped both hands around the coffee cup.
"I've been carrying that binder for three months.
She told me to bring it to the party and give it to her privately.
That's all I knew."
"You ran."
He looked at the table.
"I panicked.
I saw the police cars and I panicked.
I know how that looks."
"It looks like guilt."
"I know." He finally looked up.
"Connor, I gave a full statement.
Everything she told me, everything she asked me to do, every conversation I can remember.
I gave them all of it." He paused.
"She called me from the holding facility.
Told me if I cooperated with the police she would tell them I was the one who drafted the documents."
I watched his face.
"She said she had a version of events ready that put me at the center of it," he said.
"She said all she had to do was make one call to Pratt and I'd be looking at the same charges she was." His voice was steady, but his hands weren't.
"I called the detective anyway.
I figured the truth was the only thing I had left."
"What did Hale say?"
"That my cooperation was noted and that the physical evidence didn't support Teresa's version." He exhaled.
"She tried to use me as a backup plan.
Just like she used Amy's name on that signature line."
The diner was quiet around us.
A waitress refilled the coffee at the next table without looking over.
"She told me Amy was the problem," Mason said.
"From the beginning.
She said Amy was isolating you from your family, controlling your finances, turning you against everyone who loved you." He shook his head slowly.
"I watched Amy in that kitchen on Friday.
I walked past that door twice.
I told myself it wasn't my business." He stopped.
"That's on me."
I didn't tell him it was fine.
It wasn't fine.
"Why didn't you say something?" I asked.
"Because Teresa told me Amy had asked to handle the party herself and then changed her mind at the last minute.
She said Amy was always doing things like that — making herself look like a victim." He set the coffee cup down.
"I believed her.
I've been believing her my whole life.
We all have."
That landed somewhere uncomfortable, because it was true.
Teresa had been the center of the family's gravity for as long as I could remember.
The one who organized, who remembered, who held things together.
It had never occurred to me to question the version of events she was holding.
"Is Amy all right?" Mason asked.
"She will be."
"And Frederick?"
"His fever broke.
He's good."
Mason nodded.
He looked like he wanted to say something else and couldn't find the shape of it.
"I'm sorry, Connor," he said finally.
"I know that doesn't fix anything."
I stood up.
"Give your statement everything you have.
That's how you fix it."
He nodded.
I left him there with his untouched coffee and drove back to Laurel's house, where Amy was in the backyard with Frederick in her lap, pointing at a bird on the fence and saying its name slowly so he could hear the shape of the word.
She looked up when I came through the gate.
"How did it go?"
"He's cooperating," I said.
"Fully."
She turned back to Frederick.
The bird was still on the fence.
That night, after Frederick was asleep, Amy said something she'd been holding for a while.
"I want to go home," she said.
"Our home.
I don't want her to have taken that from us too."
I looked at her.
May you like
"Then we go home," I said.
But the next morning, Sandra called with news that made that plan more complicated than either of us had expected.
