Chapter 4: The Missing Page
I checked the envelope three times.
Three pages.
That was all.
The note ended mid-thought, and there was nothing else inside — no folded slip, no second envelope, no card tucked beneath the flowers.
The girls were at the table now.
Maya had gone quiet the moment she stepped inside and seen a stranger sitting in our kitchen.
She was eighteen and sharp, the way Lily had been sharp, and she was already watching Richard with the careful eyes of someone doing math.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Richard looked at me.
"This is Mr.
Calloway," I said.
"He's someone who knew your mother."
Cora, who was fifteen and rarely surprised by anything, tilted her head.
"Our mom?"
"Yes."
Dani, thirteen, looked between me and Richard.
"Did you know her well?"
"I did," Richard said.
His voice was careful.
Measured.
"A long time ago."
Bea, the youngest at ten, had already lost interest.
She was pulling at Maya's sleeve, asking about the cake that was still outside on the picnic table.
"Go ahead," I told them.
"Take Bea and get the cake.
I'll be out in a minute."
Cora didn't move immediately.
She kept her eyes on Richard for one more second.
Then she took Bea's hand and led the others back outside.
Maya was the last to go.
She paused at the door.
"Are you staying for cake?" she asked Richard.
The question was polite.
The tone underneath it was not.
"That's up to your mom," he said.
She looked at me.
I gave her a small nod.
She went outside.
I sat back down across from Richard.
"There's a page missing."
"I know."
I stared at him.
"You know."
"The lawyer told me.
Lily separated the last page intentionally.
It's held in a sealed document at the firm.
It can only be released under one condition."
"What condition?"
"That you and I meet in person and you agree to hear it together." He folded his hands on the table.
"She wanted you to see me first.
She wanted you to decide whether you trusted me enough before you read what she wrote."
I sat with that for a moment.
Lily had always been methodical.
Even in grief, even in fear, she had thought three steps ahead.
I had loved that about her.
Right now it made my chest ache.
"What do you think it says?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said.
"But I think it's about my mother."
"Why?"
"Because everything Lily did was about protecting the girls from my mother." He looked toward the back window.
The girls were visible outside, passing plates around the picnic table.
"Eleanor Calloway does not give up.
She didn't then and she doesn't now."
"Is she aware that you're here?"
A pause.
One beat too long.
"She found out this morning," he said.
"I don't know how.
I didn't tell her."
My hands went flat on the table.
"She has someone watching you."
"It's possible."
"Then she already knows you came here."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
I thought about the girls outside.
About Maya, who had her mother's eyes and her mother's instinct for danger.
About Bea, who still slept with a stuffed rabbit and didn't know yet that the world could be cruel.
"I need to call the lawyer," I said.
"I have the number."
"I have it too.
Lily left it." I stood up.
"I want to read the last page.
But not here.
Not today, with the girls ten feet away."
Richard nodded and rose from his chair.
"Tomorrow," I said.
"The lawyer's office.
You and me and no one else."
"Agreed."
I walked him to the front door.
He stepped onto the porch and turned back once.
"For what it's worth," he said, "what you did for them — ten years, alone — I don't have words for it."
I looked at him.
"Lily did.
That's enough."
I closed the door.
I stood in the hallway for a moment with my back against the wood.
Then my phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
An unknown number.
A text message.
May you like
Four words.
*Leave it alone, dear.*
