Chapter 4: What Sandra Knew
My father didn't flinch.
That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward — he didn't flinch.
Sandra had said *accounts* and *money* and *war*, and he had just looked at her steadily, the way a man looks at something he has already decided about.
Sandra read his face and recalculated.
"Fine." She picked up her handbag from the chair by the door.
"Fine.
We'll go.
But this conversation is not finished, Robert."
"I know," he said.
She left.
Mia followed without another word, though she paused at the door and looked back at me — not with guilt, not with anger.
With something closer to envy, which was somehow worse.
The front door closed.
My father sat down on the edge of my bed.
He looked exhausted in a way I hadn't noticed before — like he had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had only just set it down.
"Dad." I sat beside him.
"What did she mean?
About the accounts?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"Before your mother passed," he said, "she left money for you.
Not a fortune.
But enough for university.
Enough to give you a start." He folded his hands.
"When Sandra and I married, I moved it into a separate account to protect it.
Sandra found out about it two years ago.
She's been — suggesting — that it was marital property ever since."
My throat tightened.
"She wanted my mother's money."
"She wanted a lot of things." He looked at the shredded dress still lying on the floor.
"I should have seen it sooner.
I'm sorry I didn't."
I didn't know what to say to that.
I had spent four years waiting for him to see it, and now that he had, I mostly felt tired.
"There's still a ceremony today," he said.
"You still graduated."
"I don't have anything to wear."
He stood up.
"Get your coat."
"Dad—"
"Get your coat, Emma."
I didn't argue.
He drove us to the one department store in town that opened early.
He walked straight to the women's formalwear section, found a sales assistant, and explained the situation in four sentences.
The woman — her name tag said *Dottie* — looked at me, looked at my father, and said, "Give me fifteen minutes."
She found me a dress.
Pale blue.
Simple.
Nothing like the one I had saved for, but when I stood in front of the fitting room mirror, something settled in my chest.
"It's good," I told her.
"It's better than good," Dottie said firmly.
"You look like someone who earned today."
My father paid without looking at the price tag.
In the car on the way to the ceremony, he said, "I called a solicitor this morning.
Before any of this happened.
I'd already made the appointment."
I turned to look at him.
"You had?"
"I've been building a file for three months." He kept his eyes on the road.
"The letter was the last piece I needed.
I just didn't expect to find it the way I did."
"How did you find it?"
"Cleaning out the filing cabinet last week.
It had been tucked behind Sandra's insurance papers." He paused.
"She wasn't careful enough.
She thought I never looked in there."
I sat with that for a moment.
"She's going to fight," I said.
"I know."
"She said she knows things about you."
"She knows what I let her see," he said.
"There's a difference."
He pulled into the car park at the university.
Around us, other families were streaming toward the hall — parents with cameras, siblings in good shoes, grandmothers holding programs.
My father turned off the engine and looked at me.
"Whatever she does next," he said, "I need you to let me handle it.
Don't respond to her.
Don't respond to Mia.
Whatever they say to you, whatever they send — you come to me first."
"Why?
What do you think they'll do?"
He opened his door.
May you like
"I think Sandra is already on the phone," he said.
"And I think she's not calling a friend."
