Chapter 9: Thirty-One Years
Three days later, I went to see Martin.
Not at the office.
At his house — the one in Elmfield with the stone gate and the garden his wife had planted before she left him, which he'd kept up ever since with a stubbornness I had always admired.
I rang the bell.
He answered in a shirt with no tie, which was how I knew his solicitor had told him to appear cooperative.
"Jon."
"Martin."
He stepped back.
I went in.
We sat in the kitchen.
He didn't offer tea.
I didn't want any.
"The forensic accountant finished her preliminary review this morning," I said.
"Four hundred and twenty-two thousand, six hundred dollars.
Eighteen months.
Thirty-one separate transfers."
He looked at the table.
"The power of attorney has been referred to the district attorney's office.
The fraud unit is handling it alongside Detective Rourke's investigation into Hannah's fall." I kept my voice even.
"Florence gave a full statement yesterday.
She confirmed you were the architect of the arrangement.
She said the original plan was hers to execute and yours to design."
Martin's jaw moved.
"She said that."
"She did."
"She's protecting herself."
"Probably.
It doesn't make her wrong." I looked at him.
"The emails go back two years, Martin.
You found her or she found you — I don't know which and it doesn't matter anymore.
You built this around me.
Around my grief and my loneliness and the fact that I trusted you more than I've trusted almost anyone in my life."
He put both hands flat on the table.
"Jon—"
"I'm not here for an apology."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because thirty-one years deserves a conversation." I sat back.
"I want to understand.
Not forgive.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
But understand."
He was quiet for a long time.
"The Harwick development," he said finally.
"When I brought it to you in 2021, you almost pulled out.
You said you were tired.
You said you weren't sure you wanted to keep building." He looked up.
"I'd put everything I had into that project.
My own money.
My own name.
If you'd walked away, I'd have lost it all."
"So you decided to take what you needed before I could walk away."
"I decided to make sure you couldn't." His voice was flat.
Not proud.
Not ashamed.
Just flat.
"Florence was a means to an end.
The power of attorney was insurance.
The plan was never to take everything — just enough to guarantee my position in the development regardless of what you decided."
"Four hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars is not *enough.*"
"It escalated." He looked back at the table.
"She was good at it.
Better than I expected.
And then—" He stopped.
"And then you started to think bigger."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
"Hannah," I said.
His hands pressed harder against the table.
"I didn't go to her house."
"I know." I watched him.
"But you knew Florence was going.
And you didn't stop her."
The silence that followed was the longest of the morning.
"No," he said.
"I didn't stop her."
I stood up.
"The district attorney will be in touch," I said.
"Your solicitor knows the timeline."
"Jon."
I stopped at the kitchen door.
"I am sorry," he said.
"For whatever that's worth."
I thought about him at Margaret's grave.
His hand on my back.
The two a.m.
drives to the hospital.
Thirty-one years of a friendship that had apparently contained, somewhere in its foundation, a crack I had never thought to look for.
May you like
"I don't know yet what it's worth," I said.
I left him at the table with his hands flat on the wood and the garden his ex-wife had planted visible through the window, still tended, still green, still standing.
