“If either of you brings paper into this house again without my attorney present, I will have you removed.”
The recording ended in static.
I realized my hands were clenched so hard around my knees that my nails had left little half-moons in my skin.
Lenora spoke first. “That’s enough for criminal motive and a pattern argument if anyone needs one.”
I laughed once, but it cracked in the middle. “He knew. He knew exactly what they were.”
“He did.”
“And he still let me try with them after he died.”
Lenora’s expression shifted, not softer exactly, but more human. “Or he hoped you’d never have to know this much.”
That was the problem with people who loved you well: sometimes they protected you by delaying pain instead of removing it. The delay doesn’t make the pain smaller. It just changes when it arrives.
We spent another hour in the unit.
The notebook from the cash box was my grandfather’s log. Dates, names, what had been said, what documents had appeared, what he suspected, what Darius advised. Tucked between two pages was a photocopy of my mother’s handwriting on a sticky note:
Petra owes me a favor. Could help with acknowledgment if needed.
I stared at it until the words blurred.
Petra.
