Chapter 6: The Call from His Father
Daniel picked up immediately.
"Dad."
I couldn't hear his father's voice, only the low register of it — measured, deliberate, the tone of a man who had been thinking carefully about what he was going to say.
Daniel listened.
His expression didn't change much, but I watched his jaw tighten once, then release.
"When?" he said.
More from his father.
"Does she know you've spoken to the solicitor?"
A shorter answer this time.
"All right," Daniel said.
"I'll come over tomorrow morning.
Early, before the girls are up." He paused.
"Dad — are you okay?"
Whatever his father said to that, Daniel closed his eyes briefly.
"I know," he said.
"I'll see you tomorrow."
He set the phone down.
"She went to his brother tonight," Daniel said.
"After I called her.
She drove to Uncle Garrett's house and told him that my dad has been behaving erratically, that she's worried about his mental state, and that any decisions he's made recently about the property shouldn't be trusted."
I stared at him.
"She did that tonight?
Within an hour of your call?"
"Garrett rang my dad straight away.
He wasn't interested in what she was selling." Daniel sat back down at the table.
"But that's what she does.
The moment she feels the ground shifting, she moves.
She doesn't wait.
She goes to whoever she thinks she can still influence and she works them."
"She's trying to protect the will."
"She's trying to protect her position.
The will is part of it." He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Garrett told my dad something else tonight.
Something he hadn't mentioned before."
"What?"
"My mother visited him six months ago.
In Portland.
She brought documents — unofficial ones, nothing legally binding, but she'd had someone draft a letter of intent, essentially a statement that the property had always been understood within the family to pass through the male line, and she wanted Garrett to sign it."
"Did he?"
"No.
He thought it was strange and he put it in a drawer and didn't think much of it until the other letter came out." Daniel looked at me.
"Nora, she's been building a case.
For months.
Maybe longer.
She was never going to accept three daughters.
She decided that before they were born and she started laying groundwork."
I thought about the black dress.
The black gloves.
The small hat pinned to her hair.
She hadn't shown up to cause a scene on impulse.
She had dressed for it.
"What does your father want to do?" I asked.
"He wants to talk tomorrow.
He said—" Daniel stopped.
"What?"
"He said he has something to show me.
Something he found in her desk three weeks ago and hasn't known what to do with since."
The kitchen light hummed faintly above us.
May you like
"What is it?" I asked.
"He wouldn't say over the phone."
