Chapter 9: What the Morning Brought
The injunction was granted at 11:47 p.m.
Grace called while Chloe and I were sitting in the parking garage below her building, too tired to drive, eating vending machine crackers that Seth had produced from somewhere.
She read us the key language over the phone — *all transfer documents pertaining to the Hargrove Property Trust are hereby stayed pending full judicial review* — and then told us to go home and sleep.
We didn't sleep much.
Lily had fallen asleep in the car and didn't wake when I carried her inside.
Chloe sat at the kitchen table in her torn wedding dress for twenty minutes before I gently talked her into changing.
She came back in an old sweater and sat down again.
I made tea.
We sat across from each other.
"Say what you're thinking," I said.
"I keep seeing her face," Chloe said.
"When she said she loved me.
She meant it.
I could tell." She wrapped both hands around the mug.
"That's the part I can't make fit with the rest of it."
"People can mean both things."
"I know." She looked at the table.
"I just never thought my sister was one of those people."
I reached across and put my hand over hers.
"What do you want to do about the house?" I said.
"Your father's house.
The one he left you."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I want to give her half," she said.
"I always wanted to give her half.
I told her that the week after the funeral."
"She said you told her you'd think about it."
"I know what she said." Chloe looked up.
"I know what I said.
I said I would do it.
I had already decided.
I just wanted to talk to you first — to make sure it wouldn't affect anything with the trust.
I was going to tell her the following week." She stopped.
"She never gave me the following week."
I didn't say anything.
"If she had just waited," Chloe said.
"If she had just called me one more time instead of—" She stopped again.
Pressed her lips together.
"I would have given her half the house.
I would have split everything.
She would have had everything she wanted."
"She didn't know that."
"No." Chloe looked at the window.
"She didn't trust me enough to wait and find out."
The hospital called at 7 a.m.
The bl00d panel confirmed a sedative compound — mild, fast-clearing, consistent with what Diana had described.
The attending physician filed a report.
The police called an hour later.
Diana had been formally arrested at 6:40 that morning on charges of false imprisonment, administering a substance without consent, fraud, and assault.
Chloe took the call in the bedroom.
I heard nothing through the door.
She came out five minutes later and sat back down at the kitchen table.
"They arrested her," she said.
"I know."
"She's at the county facility.
She can make calls.
She hasn't called me."
"Do you want her to?"
Chloe thought about it.
"I don't know," she said.
"I think I want her to want to.
I think I want her to pick up a phone and call me before she calls her attorney." She looked at her tea, which had gone cold.
"But she won't.
Because that's not who she became."
Lily came downstairs in her pajamas at eight, dragging her stuffed rabbit.
She climbed into Chloe's lap without asking and Chloe put both arms around her.
"Is today still the wedding day?" Lily asked.
"No, sweetheart," Chloe said.
"That was yesterday."
"Are you and Daddy still getting married?"
Chloe looked at me over the top of Lily's head.
"Yes," she said.
"We're still getting married."
"Good," Lily said.
She tucked her rabbit under her chin.
"Can we do it somewhere smaller?
I don't like big churches.
They're too echoey."
Chloe laughed.
It was the first time I had heard her laugh in twenty-four hours and it filled the kitchen like light coming through a window.
May you like
"Yes," she said.
"Somewhere much smaller."
