Victoria poured an entire tray of wine over my uniform.

The name on the screen was a law firm.

Calloway & Brent.

William read it twice, then looked up at Victoria with an expression I hadn't seen on him yet.

Not anger.

Something past anger — the flat, focused look of someone assembling pieces they should have found years ago.

"Why is your attorney calling you at nine o'clock on a Friday night?"

"I have no idea."

"Victoria."

"I said I have no idea, William.

I don't control when my attorney calls me."

He answered it anyway.

"This is William Holt.

I'm with Victoria Ashworth.

You're on speaker." A beat.

"Go ahead."

Silence on the line.

Then a careful, measured voice.

"Mr.

Holt.

This is Patricia Calloway.

I apologize for the hour.

I've been trying to reach Mrs.

Ashworth regarding a matter that has become somewhat time-sensitive."

"What matter?"

Another careful pause.

"It concerns a document.

A letter, specifically.

One that was filed with our office approximately four years ago, with instructions that it be held until a particular condition was met."

My hands had gone cold.

"What condition?" William said.

"The condition was contact.

Specifically — if Eleanor Marsh made contact with William Holt, or if William Holt made contact with Eleanor Marsh, the letter was to be released immediately to both parties." A pause.

"Mrs.

Ashworth was listed as the notifying party.

She was to inform us when contact occurred."

William turned to look at Victoria.

She was staring at the phone.

"Who filed this letter?" he asked.

"A Ms.

Diane Marsh," Patricia Calloway said.

"She filed it three weeks before she passed."

The room had gone so quiet I could hear the ice settling in someone's abandoned drink across the room.

My mother had known.

She had known this moment might come, and she had prepared for it, and she had trusted a law firm and a condition and the thin possibility that I would one day end up in the same room as my father.

She had set a tripwire across time.

And Victoria had known about it for four years.

"She never told you," I said.

Not a question.

William shook his head slowly.

"She was supposed to notify them," I said.

"The moment contact happened.

She was supposed to trigger the release."

"Yes," Patricia Calloway said quietly from the phone.

"That is correct."

"And she didn't."

"We received no notification from Mrs.

Ashworth.

We became aware of this evening's events through — a separate channel.

Which is why I've been calling."

I looked at Victoria.

"What's in the letter?"

She said nothing.

"What did my mother write?"

Still nothing.

But her hands — the ones that had crushed my pendant without hesitating — were pressed flat against her sides now, fingers rigid.

"Mrs.

Calloway," William said into the phone.

"Can the letter be read tonight?"

"It can be sent electronically within the hour to any address you provide.

Both parties are entitled to receive it simultaneously, per Ms.

Marsh's instructions."

"Send it," William said.

He gave his email address.

Then he looked at me.

I gave mine.

He ended the call.

The three of us stood in the wreckage of the evening — the overturned cart still at the edge of the room, the wine drying dark on the marble, the broken pendant in William's hand — and waited.

Victoria picked up her clutch.

"I'd like to leave," she said.

"You're not leaving," William said.

"You can't keep me here."

"No," he said.

"But you'll want to hear what's in that letter before you decide what to do next.

Because if you walk out that door right now, you'll spend the rest of the night wondering what it says.

And you won't sleep.

And tomorrow will be worse."

She stopped.

She didn't sit down.