Chapter 6: What Douglas Found
Patricia called on Wednesday morning, two days before the deadline Douglas had set for his first round of requests.
"He's been to the hospice," she said.
I was at work.
I stepped into the stairwell and let the door close behind me.
"Already?"
"He spoke to three staff members and the volunteer coordinator.
He's requesting your full volunteer log going back twenty-six months." A pause.
"He also spoke to a patient.
One of the long-term residents who knew Nathan."
"Which one?"
"A woman named Edith.
Eighty-four.
She was in the room next to Nathan's for the last three weeks of his stay."
I knew Edith.
She had a photograph of her late husband taped above her bed and she always asked me to read her the weather forecast even though she never went outside.
"What did she tell him?"
"That's what I'm calling about," Patricia said.
"Edith told his investigator that she overheard a conversation between you and Nathan approximately two weeks before he passed.
She says Nathan told you — and I'm reading from the notes here — *'Everything I have will go to you.
I've already made sure of it.'*"
The stairwell was very quiet.
"That's not what he said," I said.
"What did he say?"
I pressed my back against the wall.
I remembered the afternoon clearly.
Nathan had been tired.
We'd come back from the diner and he'd fallen asleep in the chair by the window, and when he woke up he'd looked at me for a long moment before he spoke.
"He said, *'Everything I have, I'm leaving behind.
I've already made sure of it.'*" I paused.
"He meant regrets.
He was talking about regrets.
We'd been talking about his life — things he wished he'd done differently."
"That's a significant difference," Patricia said.
"I know."
"Edith is eighty-four and hard of hearing and she was on the other side of a wall," Patricia said.
"But Douglas's attorney is going to use it."
"Can we talk to Edith?"
"I already tried.
She's not hostile — she's just certain.
She's been telling the story to other residents all week.
By the time this reaches a courtroom, six people will have heard her version and believe it completely."
I stared at the fire door across from me.
"There's something else," Patricia said.
"Douglas has filed a formal challenge.
It's been submitted.
We have thirty days to respond."
"What are our options?"
"We respond with Nathan's documentation — the will, the letters, the medical records confirming his capacity.
We gather character witnesses from the hospice.
We build the clearest possible picture of who you are and what actually happened." She paused.
"And we hope that's enough."
"Is it enough?"
A breath.
"It should be.
But Douglas has money and time and a seventy-year story about a brother who never mentioned your name." Another pause.
"And right now, the only person who could truly confirm your version of events is Nathan."
I looked down at my hands.
"Patricia," I said.
"Nathan kept records.
He was meticulous — you said so yourself.
Letters, documents.
He spent twenty years searching for me.
That kind of search leaves a trail."
"It does," she said slowly.
"Then let's find it."
Silence on the line.
Then: "I'll call his former address.
His storage unit, if he had one.
His email provider." A pause.
"Claire, if we find what I think we might find — correspondence, search records, anything that documents how long he was looking for you — Douglas's entire argument collapses."
"Then find it," I said.
I went back to my desk.
I sat down.
I opened my laptop and stared at the screen for a long time without seeing it.
Then I opened a new document and started writing down everything I could remember.
Every conversation.
Every afternoon.
Every word Nathan had said that I hadn't understood at the time but understood now.
I wrote for three hours.
When I finally stopped, I had fourteen pages.
And at the bottom of page eleven, I had written something that made me go very still.
Nathan had mentioned his brother exactly once.
*"Douglas always thought I'd amount to nothing,"* he'd said.
*"Maybe he was right.
Or maybe the things that matter most aren't the things Douglas knows how to count."*
I stared at the line.
Then I picked up my phone and called Patricia.
May you like
"I think Nathan left us something else," I said.
"Something he didn't put in the box."
