Chapter 3: The Woman Who Answered
My best friend's name was Priya Anand.
We had met in college, the year after Nora pulled me out of a financial aid crisis by selling her car.
Priya had been the one who found me sitting on the dormitory steps at midnight with a letter from the bursar's office.
She had sat down beside me without asking why, opened a bag of chips, and said, "Tell me everything."
That was seventeen years ago.
When I landed in Vancouver and turned on the new prepaid phone I had bought at the Miami airport, there were two missed calls from her.
I hadn't told her I was coming.
I hadn't told anyone.
I called her back from the arrivals hall.
She picked up on the first ring.
"I'm at the airport," I said.
A pause.
Then: "Which one?"
"Yours."
She didn't ask a single question.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes.
Don't move."
She was there in fourteen.
She pulled up to the curb, stepped out of the car, and looked at me for exactly two seconds before she wrapped both arms around me.
I hadn't cried since the clinic.
I hadn't cried when I read Christopher's message.
I hadn't cried on the plane.
I cried then.
She held on until I stopped.
She didn't say it was going to be okay.
She didn't say anything at all.
She just kept one hand on my back and let me fall apart against her shoulder in the drop-off lane while cars moved around us.
When I finally pulled back, she looked at my face.
"Nora?" she asked quietly.
"Yesterday."
Her jaw tightened.
She took my bag without another word and put it in the trunk.
We drove to her apartment in silence.
She made tea.
She set a blanket on the couch.
She sat across from me in the armchair and waited.
I told her everything.
Christopher's message.
The 52 dollars.
What he had said about freezing the payments.
What Gwen had whispered in my ear.
The clinic.
The ticket.
The SIM card snapped in two.
Priya listened without interrupting.
Her tea went cold.
When I finished, she set her mug down on the coffee table.
"He told you he ordered it," she said.
"Those exact words."
"Yes."
"And Gwen confirmed she was following his instructions."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Abby.
That's not just cruelty.
That's liability."
"I know."
"Do you have any of it in writing?"
"He sent the message from his personal account.
I have screenshots on the phone I left behind." I stopped.
"I broke the SIM.
But the phone itself is still at the house."
Priya looked at me steadily.
"Is there anyone who can get it?"
I thought about that.
The house in Atlanta was in Christopher's name.
The staff answered to him.
Gwen had a key.
"No," I said.
"There's no one."
Priya picked up her own phone.
"Then we start with what we have.
You said he sent the transfer from a banking app.
Do you have the transaction record?"
I pulled out the prepaid phone.
The screenshot of the 52-dollar transfer was still in my email, forwarded to myself before I destroyed the SIM.
I turned the screen toward her.
She looked at it for a long time.
"Take it as compensation," she read aloud.
The words sat in the air between us.
"He wrote that," I said.
"He actually wrote that."
Priya set the phone down carefully, the way you set something down when you don't trust yourself not to throw it.
"You need a lawyer," she said.
"Not eventually.
Tomorrow morning."
"I don't have money for a lawyer."
"I do." She held up one hand before I could speak.
"Don't.
Nora spent ten years making sure you finished school.
The least I can do is make one phone call."
I looked at her.
"She called me," Priya said more quietly.
"Two weeks before she passed.
She said she was worried about you.
She said she didn't think Christopher was going to let you leave easily."
My throat closed.
"She asked me to look out for you." Priya's voice was steady but her eyes weren't.
"So that's what I'm doing."
I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
My prepaid phone lit up on the table between us.
Unknown number.
Atlanta area code.
I looked at Priya.
She nodded once.
I answered.
"Abigail Reynolds?" A woman's voice.
Calm, professional.
"My name is Grace Mercer.
I'm a paralegal with Daniel Holt's office.
Mr.
Holt asked me to reach you tonight if possible.
We've been trying to locate a working number."
I went very still.
"How did you get this number?"
"Priya Anand provided it twenty minutes ago," Grace said.
"She called Mr.
Holt's emergency line."
I looked across the coffee table.
Priya was already watching me with her arms folded and her chin slightly raised, the same expression she'd had the night she sat down beside me on those dormitory steps.
"Mr.
Holt needs to speak with you before Monday," Grace continued.
"There are documents your sister filed that directly name you as a protected party.
Before anything is submitted to the court, he wants your consent and your account of events."
"What kind of documents?"
A brief pause.
"Mrs.
Reynolds, your sister was very thorough.
I've been doing this work for eleven years.
I've never seen a patient in her condition produce this level of documentation." Another pause.
"She loved you very much."
I pressed my hand flat against my knee to stop it from shaking.
"Tell Mr.
Holt I'll call him in the morning," I said.
"He'll be available from eight," Grace said.
"One more thing.
He asked me to tell you not to contact Christopher Reynolds or anyone at Reynolds Enterprises before that call.
Not for any reason."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good." Her voice softened slightly.
"Get some rest if you can, Mrs.
Reynolds.
You've had a very hard few days."
She ended the call.
Priya hadn't moved.
"She called me two weeks ago," I said again.
It wasn't a question this time.
"She knew," Priya said simply.
"Nora always knew."
I set the phone down.
Outside, the Vancouver night was quiet and dark and completely indifferent to everything that had just happened.
May you like
Somewhere in Atlanta, Christopher Reynolds was holding a letter written in my dead sister's handwriting.
And he had no idea how far she had reached.
