Chapter 9: What Portia Did Next
The call was for Cedric.
Flora brought the phone to him in the garden.
He looked at the screen, and whatever he saw on it made him stand up from the bench immediately.
He answered it.
Alonzo watched from across the garden.
He couldn't hear the words, but he could read the shape of the conversation — Cedric's posture going rigid, one hand pressing flat against his chest, his head turning slightly away as if the words needed more space than his body could hold.
The call lasted less than two minutes.
Cedric walked over to Alonzo when it was done.
He moved carefully, the way people move when they are managing something large and don't want to spill it.
"That was my solicitor," he said.
"Portia has filed an emergency injunction.
She's claiming the forensic documents Rosalind presented today were obtained through deception and that their use constitutes defamation." He paused.
"She's also filed a petition to have me declared mentally unfit to manage my own affairs."
The garden went very quiet around them.
Rosalind had heard.
She stood completely still.
"On what basis?" Alonzo asked.
"She's citing the incident in the ballroom," Cedric said.
"She's arguing that my reaction — my distress — demonstrates cognitive decline.
That I was manipulated by Rosalind into a public breakdown." His voice was steady but thin.
"She has two witnesses prepared to testify."
"The guests who left early," Alonzo said.
Cedric nodded.
Rosalind spoke quietly.
"She planned this too."
"Yes," Alonzo said.
"If she can have Cedric declared unfit, she controls everything.
The estate.
The legal decisions.
The ability to contest any document." He looked at Cedric.
"She doesn't just want the inheritance.
She wants the authority."
Cedric looked at the letter still in his hand.
His wife's handwriting.
The crossed sevens.
"She's my daughter," he said.
It wasn't a defense.
It was something closer to grief.
"I know," Alonzo said.
"And she's counting on that."
He turned to Rosalind.
"Your solicitor.
Can they respond to an emergency injunction over the weekend?"
"If I call them now," she said.
She already had her phone out.
"Do it," he said.
"And tell them about the bank transfer and the signed statement.
We need everything filed together.
One consolidated response."
Rosalind moved to the far end of the garden, phone to her ear.
Alonzo looked at Cedric.
"I need you to do something difficult," he said.
Cedric met his eyes.
"I need you to make a statement," Alonzo said.
"In writing.
Tonight.
Witnessed by your solicitor and by me.
A clear, detailed, coherent account of everything that happened today — what you recognized, what you understood, what decisions you made and why." He paused.
"If Portia wants to argue cognitive decline, we give the court a document that makes that argument impossible."
Cedric was quiet for a moment.
"She'll escalate further," he said.
"Whatever we file, she'll find another angle."
"Yes," Alonzo said.
"But every time she escalates, she spends more of her credibility.
And every time we respond with evidence, we spend more of hers."
Cedric looked across the garden at Rosalind, pacing slowly near the hedge, speaking in a low and focused voice into her phone.
"I wasn't there for her," he said.
"When she was young.
I wasn't there."
"You can't fix that tonight," Alonzo said.
"But you can make sure Portia doesn't take what your mother left her."
Cedric folded the letter carefully.
Placed it in his breast pocket, close to his chest.
"All right," he said.
"Let's write the statement."
They went inside.
Flora met them at the door.
She had a pot of tea already made and two cups set out, and she didn't ask any questions, which was its own kind of answer.
They sat at the kitchen table — Alonzo, Cedric, and eventually Rosalind, who came in from the garden twenty minutes later and sat down without being asked.
Cedric wrote in longhand.
He wrote for forty minutes without stopping.
His handwriting was clear and deliberate, and every seven was crossed.
When he finished, he passed the pages to Alonzo.
Alonzo read them carefully.
Then he passed them to Rosalind.
She read them.
Set them down.
"It's good," she said.
"It's very good."
Cedric looked at her.
"Your grandmother used to say I was better on paper than in person."
Rosalind looked at him for a moment.
"She said the same thing about herself."
Something passed between them — careful and fragile and new.
Flora poured the tea.
Outside, the garden lights had come on.
The last of the wedding guests had gone.
The caterers were loading the van.
The flowers on the tables were beginning to close.
Alonzo's phone buzzed again.
Same unknown number.
*She filed the injunction from the car.
She's not going home.
Ask Flora where Portia goes when she needs to make something disappear.*
He looked at Flora.
Flora was already looking at him.
"You saw the message," he said.
"I saw your face," she said.
He turned the phone toward her.
She read it.
Set the phone down on the table.
"There's a storage facility," she said.
"Forty minutes east of here.
Portia has used it for years.
She calls it her archive." Flora's hands folded around her teacup.
"I've never been inside.
But I know she went there the week after Mrs.
Cedric passed.
She was gone for four hours and came back with nothing in her hands."
Alonzo looked at Rosalind.
Rosalind looked at the table.
"If there are original documents in that facility," she said quietly, "and she destroys them tonight—"
"Then we work with copies," Alonzo said.
"And we make sure the court knows she destroyed them."
He picked up his phone and dialed.
Not Rosalind's solicitor.
Someone else.
The call connected on the second ring.
"It's Alonzo," he said.
"I need you to find out who holds the lease on a storage facility forty minutes east of the city.
Tonight if possible." A pause.
"Yes.
It matters."
He ended the call.
The kitchen was quiet.
Maisie appeared in the doorway in her coat, ready to leave, holding a small paper bag that clinked faintly — leftover wedding favors she had collected from the empty tables.
She looked at the four adults sitting around the kitchen table with their tea and their papers and their careful faces.
"Is everything going to be okay?" she asked.
Alonzo looked at her.
"Yes," he said.
Maisie considered this with the seriousness she applied to most things.
"Flora said the same thing," she said.
May you like
"So it's probably true."
She went to find her coat buttons.
