Chapter 6: Every Word
Diane stood up so fast her chair scraped back against the floor.
"You can't — that's illegal.
You can't record me without — "
"This is a legal office," Gerald said calmly.
"There is a notice of recording posted in the lobby.
You walked past it on your way in."
Diane looked at Nora.
"You set me up."
"You came here uninvited," Nora said.
"You put a cheque on the table and told me to disappear.
I didn't set anything up.
You did."
"That recording means nothing.
It's a private conversation — "
"It's a documented attempt to pressure a beneficiary into surrendering a legal inheritance," Gerald said.
"Combined with the physical incident at the family home three days ago, it forms a meaningful pattern.
I'd strongly recommend you speak to your own attorney before you say anything further."
Diane's mouth opened.
Closed.
She picked up the cheque from the desk and put it back in her handbag.
Her hands weren't steady.
"This isn't over," she said.
"It will be," Nora said.
"Thirty days, Diane."
Diane walked out.
The door didn't sl@m — she controlled that much — but the sound of her heels across the lobby floor was sharp and fast and then gone.
Gerald turned off the recorder and made a note in the file.
"She'll go back and tell your father it went well," he said.
"People like that always do."
"And then?"
"And then your father will call his own lawyer, discover he has no viable grounds to contest a trust that was properly executed and witnessed eleven years ago, and that lawyer will tell him exactly what his options are." Gerald closed the folder.
"Which are limited."
Nora nodded slowly.
She felt something she hadn't expected — not satisfaction, not quite.
Something more like tiredness.
The kind that comes after you've been holding something heavy for a very long time and you've finally set it down, and your arms don't know what to do with themselves.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Of course."
"Did my mother ever talk about my father?
When she came to see you?"
Gerald was quiet for a moment.
"She spoke about him carefully.
She was not a person who spoke badly of people, even when she had reason to." He paused.
"She said once that she had married someone she hoped he would become.
And that she had learned, slowly, that hope is not a plan."
Nora looked at the photograph still sitting on the corner of the desk.
Her mother laughing in the garden.
Thirty-two years old.
Already planning.
"She was protecting me before she even knew she needed to," Nora said.
"Yes," Gerald said.
"She was."
Nora's phone buzzed.
She looked at the screen.
Keira.
She stared at it for a moment.
Her stepsister was seventeen.
She had thrown a glass at Nora's head and laughed about it at the dinner table.
She had also, apparently, called once the night Nora left — the only call Nora hadn't been able to fully explain away.
She answered.
"Nora." Keira's voice was different from what she expected.
Quieter.
"I need to talk to you.
Not with Mum around.
Can we — is there somewhere we can meet?"
"Why?"
A pause.
"Because I know something.
About your dad.
About what happened to your mum's money after she died." Another pause, shorter.
"I've known for a year and I didn't say anything and I think — I think I should have."
Nora looked at Gerald.
He had heard.
He gave a small, careful nod.
May you like
"Tell me where you are," Nora said.
"I'll come to you."
