Chapter 4: The Price of Staying Quiet
I stared at the signature until the letters blurred.
“That isn’t mine.”
Felicity folded her arms.
“You sign hundreds of forms.
You probably forgot.”
“I have never signed my E like that.”
Silas took the statement without touching the ink.
“This payment came from a private education trust.
It was meant for Eleanor’s advanced trauma training.”
Julian looked at Felicity.
“Did you take it?”
“No.
And if you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me that in front of everyone.”
“If you loved me, I wouldn’t need to ask.”
The wedding coordinator approached quietly.
“Mr.
Montgomery, should I ask the guests to leave?”
Felicity grabbed Julian’s arm.
“Tell her no.
We’re getting married.”
Julian removed her hand.
“The ceremony is paused.”
“You cannot humiliate me like this.”
“You introduced Eleanor as ‘just a nurse’ for entertainment.”
“That was a joke!”
“So was the wrong name on her invitation a joke?
Was hiding her letter a joke?”
Dad moved closer to Julian.
“Young man, every family has private tensions.”
Julian looked him in the eye.
“Your daughter may have forged a signature.
That stopped being private.”
Dad turned on me.
“Are you satisfied now?”
“Martin,” Denise warned.
“No, let him speak,” I said.
“What exactly should satisfy me?
Losing an opportunity I never knew existed?
Watching my sister use my work to ask for money?”
“You always make yourself the victim.”
My throat closed.
The chair under my hand scraped across the floor.
“Dad, I asked you once why my mail kept disappearing.”
“That was years ago.”
“You said I was careless.”
“You were exhausted.
We all walked around you like broken glass.”
“I was grieving patients I couldn’t save, and you made me apologize for being tired.”
He looked away.
“Your mother knew how dramatic you could be.”
My hand came up before I could stop it, not toward him, but over my mouth.
Tears spilled through my fingers.
Denise stepped in front of me.
“Your mother never said that.”
Dad went still.
Denise opened her handbag again and removed a small velvet box.
“She left this for Eleanor.
Martin told me to keep it until the girls stopped fighting.”
Inside lay my mother’s silver locket.
“You had this?” I whispered.
Denise’s eyes filled.
“For eleven years.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because I was a coward.
I wanted peace in my marriage more than I wanted to do what was right.”
Felicity scoffed.
“Now Denise is pretending to be a saint.”
“No,” Denise said.
“I am admitting what I did.”
She placed the locket in my palm and closed my fingers around it.
“I cannot return eleven years, Eleanor.
But I can stop lying tonight.”
My legs finally failed.
Denise lowered me into a chair and knelt beside me.
“I thought Mum had forgotten me,” I said.
“She didn’t.” Denise held my shaking hands.
“The note inside says, ‘For my Eleanor, who notices the people everyone else overlooks.’”
A sob broke out of me.
Denise put her arms around my shoulders and did not ask me to quiet down.
Across the table, Silas’s attorney was examining the statement.
“This account was emptied in three transfers,” he said.
“Where did the money go?” Julian asked.
The attorney turned his tablet around.
“A bridal company, a property deposit, and this wedding venue.”
Felicity’s face went white.
May you like
Then the attorney tapped the final line.
“The last transfer was authorized at nine fourteen this morning—from a device registered to Felicity.”
