Chapter 5: Before the Letter Arrived
The next morning, Margaret was gone before Lily woke up.
No note.
No goodbye.
Her bedroom door was open and her overnight bag was missing from the hall.
Daniel found me in the kitchen making oatmeal.
"She went back to her apartment," he said.
"She called a car at six."
"Is she coming back?"
He poured himself coffee.
"She called her attorney this morning.
I heard her on the phone before she left."
I kept stirring the oatmeal.
"What kind of attorney?" I asked.
"Estate attorney." He sat down.
"She's going to contest the deed."
I had expected it.
That didn't make it easier to hear at seven in the morning with my daughter about to walk downstairs.
"On what grounds?" I asked.
"Diminished capacity.
She's going to argue Richard wasn't of sound mind when he changed the deed."
I set the spoon down.
Richard had been diagnosed fourteen months before he passed.
Early stages.
He had been sharp until very near the end — sharper than most people half his age.
He had known exactly what he was doing when he sat with his attorney and changed that document.
He had told me so himself, sitting in the car outside the attorney's office, holding my hand.
*I want you and Lily to be safe*, he had said.
*Whatever happens.
Whatever she does.*
He had known.
"She won't win," I said.
"She doesn't need to win," Daniel said.
"She just needs to tie it up long enough to make it expensive enough that you walk away."
Lily came downstairs in her pajamas, her hair still flat from sleep, carrying the stuffed rabbit Richard had given her the previous Christmas.
"Good morning, sweetheart," I said.
She climbed into the chair beside me.
"Is Grandma Margaret still here?"
"She went home early," I said.
Lily looked at the empty chair at the head of the table.
Then she looked at me.
"Are we going home too?" she asked.
"Not yet," I said.
"We have a few more things to do first."
She accepted that and pulled her bowl of oatmeal toward her.
Daniel watched her for a moment.
Then he looked at me and said, quietly enough that Lily couldn't hear: "Patricia wants to talk to you.
She said she has something.
Something she kept."
I looked at him.
"From the night of the funeral," he said.
My hand was still on the spoon.
"Tell her I'll call her this afternoon," I said.
Lily looked up.
"Mommy, can I have more honey?"
May you like
"Of course you can," I said, and reached for the jar.
But my mind was already somewhere else entirely.
