Chapter 4: What Barbara Knew
"Say that name again," I said.
Gerald repeated it.
"Raymond Coyle."
Barbara had moved to the window.
Her back was to me.
Her shoulders were rigid.
"Barbara." I walked toward her.
"How do you know Raymond Coyle?"
She didn't turn around.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Your hand went to your throat the moment I said his name."
"I'm an old woman.
I get startled."
"Mom." Ethan's voice was quiet.
Warning.
"Don't."
She turned then.
Her face had reorganized itself into something harder.
The surprise was gone.
What replaced it was a look I recognized — the same look she used when she wanted me to feel small.
Controlled.
Like I was overreacting to something reasonable.
"Your father owed Raymond money," she said.
"From a deal that went wrong decades ago.
Raymond came to us.
He said if we helped him recover what he was owed, he would handle the legal paperwork for the property transfer.
It was a business arrangement."
"He was disbarred," I said.
"The paperwork isn't legal."
"We didn't know that."
"You didn't ask."
She lifted her chin.
"We were trying to protect our family."
"By forging documents.
By stealing my father's estate." I held up the second document.
"By not knowing he had already protected me from exactly this."
Ethan stood up from the bed.
"I didn't know about the second document.
I swear to you, I didn't know."
"But you knew about the first one."
He was quiet.
"You signed it, Ethan.
You knew what it was for."
"They told me it was a formality.
That your father had agreed verbally and the paperwork just needed to catch up."
"And you believed that."
He looked at me.
His eyes were red at the edges.
"I wanted to believe it."
I set the document down on the dresser carefully, the way you set down something you intend to keep.
"Gerald," I said into the phone, "I need the name of a solicitor.
Someone who handles estate fraud."
"I already have one standing by," Gerald said.
"Her name is Patricia Hale.
She's been waiting for your call for two years."
Two years.
My father had arranged all of this two years before I ever opened that suitcase.
He had known he was running out of time.
He had built an entire safety net and folded it into a false panel at the bottom of a suitcase he knew I would pack when I finally decided I had taken enough.
He had known me better than I had known myself.
"Get out," I said.
I was looking at Barbara when I said it, but I meant both of them.
"I want you out of this house within the hour.
Take your personal belongings.
Nothing else."
Barbara took a step toward me.
"You are making a catastrophic mistake.
Raymond Coyle is not a man you want as an enemy.
He has connections.
He has —"
"He has a disbarment record and a fraudulent contract," I said.
"And I have the document that voids everything he touched."
Her jaw tightened.
"You think this is over?"
"I think you should start packing."
She stared at me for a long moment.
Then she looked at Ethan.
He was looking at the floor again.
She made a sound — not quite disgust, not quite grief — and walked out of the bedroom.
Ethan didn't follow her immediately.
He stood there with his hands at his sides.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I know."
"That's not enough."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
He picked up his jacket from the chair by the door.
He paused with his hand on the frame.
"The suitcase," he said.
"How long had it been packed?"
"Six weeks."
He nodded slowly, like that answered something he hadn't known how to ask.
Then he walked out.
I stood alone in the bedroom.
The red cast-iron pot was still on the bed where Barbara had thrown it.
I picked it up and set it on the floor.
Then I sat down on the edge of the mattress and called Patricia Hale.
She answered on the second ring.
"I've been waiting," she said.
"So have I," I told her.
"Tell me where to start."
"We already have," she said.
"Gerald called me twenty minutes ago.
Raymond Coyle filed a counter-claim this morning.
He knows you opened the suitcase."
My hand tightened on the phone.
May you like
He had been watching.
And now he was moving first.
