Chapter 7: Patricia
Patricia Voss lived in a townhouse twenty minutes from the hotel.
She opened the door before we knocked, as if she had been watching for us.
She was in her late sixties, silver-haired, wearing reading glasses pushed up on her forehead.
She looked like someone who had spent a long time being underestimated and had made her peace with it.
"Come in," she said.
"I made coffee."
We sat in her kitchen.
Lily was with a neighbor we trusted — a retired teacher named Carol who had watched her before and who asked no questions when I called that morning.
Patricia set three cups on the table and sat down across from us.
"How do you know Margaret?" James asked.
"I knew your father first.
Arthur and I were on the hospital board together for nine years." She wrapped both hands around her cup.
"I watched your mother manage him the same way she tried to manage that room last night.
The tears.
The public appeal.
The careful positioning of herself as the injured party." She looked at James steadily.
"Your father was a good man.
He spent the last four years of his life believing he had done something unforgivable, because Margaret told the story that way."
James was very still.
"What story?"
"He wanted to change his will.
He wanted to leave a portion of the estate to a charity — a children's hospital foundation he had supported for years.
Margaret disagreed.
It became a serious conflict." Patricia paused.
"He told me once, near the end, that he had signed documents he didn't fully understand.
That Gerald had presented them quickly, during a difficult period, and he had trusted them because Gerald was the family lawyer and Margaret was standing right there." She looked at James.
"He said he felt like he had been managed."
James set down his cup.
"The estate," he said slowly.
"The full estate went to my mother."
"Yes."
"The charity received nothing."
"Correct."
"My father wanted it to."
"He did." Patricia reached into the pocket of her cardigan and placed a folded envelope on the table.
"He gave me this.
Three weeks before he passed.
He said if anything ever happened that made me think Margaret had gone too far, I should use my judgment about whether to share it."
James looked at the envelope.
He didn't touch it.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A letter.
In your father's handwriting.
Describing the documents he signed, what he believed he was signing, and what Margaret told him they contained." Patricia's voice was calm and precise.
"He also describes two prior incidents where he believed Gerald had acted in Margaret's interest rather than his own."
"That's a conflict of interest," I said.
"If Gerald was supposed to be representing the estate—"
"Yes," Patricia said.
"It is."
James picked up the envelope.
He turned it over once in his hands.
"She did this to my father," he said.
It was not a question.
"I believe she did what she thought was right for the family," Patricia said carefully.
"I also believe she has never once considered that what is right for the family and what is right for Margaret might not be the same thing."
James opened the envelope.
He read slowly.
I watched his face and did not speak.
When he finished, he folded the letter and placed it back inside.
He looked up at Patricia.
"Would you be willing to provide this to our attorney?"
"That is why I called you," she said.
James nodded.
He looked at me.
I thought about Monday.
About the filing date on Gerald's phone.
About Margaret's voice in the ballroom: *She's all I have left of him.*
"There's something else," Patricia said.
We both looked at her.
"Gerald has a junior partner.
A young woman named Sasha Reeves.
She joined his firm two years ago." Patricia turned her cup slowly on the table.
"She called me this morning.
She said she has been uncomfortable with this case since it began.
She said she wants to speak to someone."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"She has the full file," Patricia said.
"Everything.
May you like
Both DNA tests, the correspondence, the draft petition, the timeline." She looked at us steadily.
"And she has emails."
