Chapter 7: What He Wanted
The words sat in the room like something spilled that no one moved to clean up.
Eleanor's face didn't change.
Mine did.
I felt it change and I let it.
"Say that again," I said.
Richard leaned back in his chair.
The reasonableness was g\*ne now.
What was underneath it was not rage.
It was something colder.
The expression of a man who had stopped pretending because he had calculated that pretending was no longer useful.
"Catherine had a trust," he said.
"Set up by her grandfather before he d\*ed.
The terms were specific.
If Catherine d\*ed without a living heir, the trust reverted to the Hale family estate.
To me, as the closest surviving Hale relation at the time." He paused.
"If she had a living heir, the trust passed to that child.
In full.
On their thirtieth birthday."
My thirtieth birthday was in eleven days.
I heard Eleanor make a sound.
Very small.
Almost nothing.
"How much?" I asked.
"The original amount was substantial.
Over thirty years of managed investment—" He stopped.
"It doesn't matter."
"How much, Richard."
He looked at me with something that might have been, in a different man, close to respect.
"Just over four million dollars," he said.
Eleanor stood up.
"You knew," she said.
"You knew Catherine was expecting.
You knew about the trust.
And the night of that fire—"
"I didn't kjll anyone," Richard said sharply.
"The fire was electrical.
The marshal confirmed it."
"The door was locked from the outside."
"Locks fail in fires.
He said so himself."
"The bellman saw you on that floor."
"I was checking on my wife." His voice was controlled again.
"I was a concerned husband.
None of that is evidence of anything."
"Then why did you spend thirty years looking for a baby you were told was d\*ad?" I asked.
He was quiet.
"Because you weren't certain," I said.
"Thomas Mercer walked away from that building carrying a baby and you saw him.
Or someone told you.
And you were never completely sure she hadn't made it."
He looked at the photograph on the table.
"Thomas Mercer came to see me," he said finally.
"Fourteen years after the fire.
He came to this house.
He told me he knew what I had done.
He told me the baby was alive and that if anything ever happened to her, he had left documentation with a lawyer that would be opened and delivered to the police."
"He came here," I said.
"He sat in that chair." Richard nodded toward where I was sitting.
"He was very calm.
He told me he wasn't asking for money.
He wasn't asking for anything.
He just wanted me to know that she was alive and that she was protected.
And that I should stop looking."
"Did you?"
"For a while." He pressed his lips together.
"When I heard he had d\*ed, I thought—"
"You thought the protection was g\*ne."
He didn't answer.
"What documentation?" Eleanor asked.
"What did Thomas say he had left with a lawyer?"
"He said he had a signed statement.
His account of the night of the fire.
What he found when he broke down Catherine's door.
The condition of the lock.
What Catherine told him before—" Richard stopped.
"Before she d\*ed," Eleanor said.
The room was very quiet.
I thought about my father.
Fourteen years after the fire, driving to this house.
Sitting in this chair.
Facing this man alone.
Telling him: *I know what you did.
And she is safe.
And you will leave her alone.*
He had never told me.
He had carried that too.
"Where is the documentation?" I asked.
"The lawyer he mentioned."
"I don't know.
He didn't tell me the name."
"But it exists."
Richard looked at me.
"If Thomas Mercer said it existed, I believed him.
He was not a man who bluffed."
No.
He wasn't.
I picked up the photograph from the table.
"My thirtieth birthday is in eleven days," I said.
"I assume you know that."
Richard said nothing.
"I'm going to find that lawyer," I said.
"And whatever my father left, I'm going to make sure it goes to the right people." I stood.
"And then I'm going to turn thirty.
And whatever Catherine left me, I'm going to use it in a way that would make her proud."
I walked to the door.
"Ava." Richard's voice stopped me.
Not threatening.
Almost — something else.
"Your mother was not afraid at the end.
Thomas told me that too.
He said she was calm.
She kissed the baby once and she told him the lullaby so he would know how to play it." A pause.
"I thought you should know that."
I didn't turn around.
May you like
"I already knew," I said.
"She wrote it on the music box."
