Chapter 6: Deb Paulson Arrives
Deb pulled up in a gray sedan exactly thirty-one minutes after I'd called her.
She was in her fifties, compact and unhurried, with reading glasses pushed up on her head and a canvas bag over one shoulder that looked like it weighed as much as Brenna's backpack.
She'd done this kind of work for nineteen years.
She walked up the path without looking at the house the way most people did — with pity or alarm.
She just walked up it.
"Lionel," she said.
"Deb.
Thanks for coming."
She looked at the pulled blinds, the bare yard, the absence of anything belonging to a child.
"Tell me on the way in."
I gave her the short version in the hallway.
Will signed six weeks before the mother's death.
Heavy medication.
A brother who appeared with a lawyer already retained.
Eight hundred a month in rent on a paid-off family home.
A photograph on a tablet that might show the moment of signing.
Deb didn't react to any of it.
She just listened.
"Where's the father?" she asked.
"Bedroom.
He's not well.
Hasn't eaten properly in three days."
She nodded once.
"And the child?"
"Kitchen table.
Doing homework."
Deb stepped into the kitchen doorway.
Brenna looked up.
"Hi," Deb said.
"I'm Deb.
Your dad asked Officer Lionel to get some help, and Officer Lionel called me.
Is that okay?"
Brenna studied her for a moment with that same grave assessment she'd turned on me outside the school.
"Are you a lawyer?" Brenna asked.
"I work with lawyers, yes."
"Do you know about wills?"
"I do."
Brenna reached under the table and pulled out a battered tablet in a cracked purple case.
She set it on the table in front of Deb.
"The photo is in the camera roll," she said.
"April fourteenth, five years ago.
There are three pictures.
The last one is the clearest."
Deb looked at me.
I looked at the seven-year-old.
"You kept it in the camera roll," I said.
"Not in a folder."
"Folders get deleted easier," Brenna said, and went back to her homework.
Deb sat down at the table, put on her reading glasses, and opened the tablet.
I stood behind her.
The photo was exactly what Radley had described.
An elderly woman at a kitchen table — this kitchen table, I realized, before the furniture had been stripped — seated across from two men.
One of them was Garrett, younger but recognizable.
The other was in a suit.
Between them on the table was a document, several pages thick.
The woman was not looking at the document.
She was looking directly at the camera.
Her expression was not confused exactly.
It was the expression of someone who had been told to sit still and was doing her best.
In the third photo, her hand was on the pen.
Garrett's hand was over hers.
Deb took her glasses off.
"Is there audio?" she asked Brenna.
"No.
Just photos."
"Is there anything else on this tablet?
Messages, emails, anything from around that time?"
Brenna hesitated for the first time.
"There's a voicemail," she said.
"Grandma left it for Dad two days before she died.
I found it when I found the photos."
The kitchen was very still.
"Have you listened to it?" I asked.
"Yes," Brenna said.
She didn't look up from her homework.
"She says she signed something she didn't understand and she wants Dad to know she's sorry.
She says Garrett told her it was paperwork for the hospital bills."
Deb set the tablet down carefully on the table.
"Radley doesn't know about the voicemail," Brenna said.
"I didn't want to tell him until there was someone who could actually do something about it."
She said it the way she said everything — quietly, precisely, without drama.
As if she had been carrying this for a long time and had simply been waiting for the right moment to set it down.
I walked to the bedroom doorway.
Radley was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped between his knees.
"There's something you need to hear," I said.
He looked up.
"Your mother left you a voicemail.
Brenna found it.
I think you should come to the kitchen."
He didn't move for a moment.
His face did something complicated that I looked away from to give him privacy.
Then he stood up, and walked down the hall, and sat across from his daughter at the folding table.
Deb held the tablet out to him.
He pressed play.
I watched his face while his mother's voice filled the small kitchen.
I watched Brenna watch her father.
She had positioned herself close enough that when his shoulders dropped and his head went forward, she could reach across the table and put both her small hands over his.
She didn't say anything.
She just held on.
Deb looked at me over the top of her glasses.
I gave her a small nod.
We had enough.
May you like
We had more than enough.
But Garrett didn't know that yet — and he was planning to arrive at the end of the week.
