Chapter 6: What Cannot Be Undone
Nick called a solicitor that evening.
Not a family solicitor.
His own.
A woman named Claire Hartley whose card he'd kept in his wallet for two years after a friend recommended her, never expecting to use it.
He stepped into the back bedroom to make the call, and I sat at the kitchen table with Marcus and Richard while Susan stood at the far end of the room, her arms crossed, her face turned toward the window.
"She's going to fight it," Marcus said quietly.
"Fight what?" I asked.
"Whatever comes next." He kept his voice low.
"She's been managing this family's money for thirty years.
She knows every account, every document, every name on every form.
She didn't do what she did carelessly.
She had a plan."
Richard looked up.
"She always has a plan."
"Dad." Marcus looked at his father.
"Did you know?
Before today?"
Richard was quiet for a moment.
"I knew she didn't want the marriage to happen.
I didn't know how far she'd gone." He turned his coffee cup in his hands.
"I should have asked more questions.
When Nick came home from the hospital and Hannah had apparently just — vanished — something felt wrong.
I told myself it wasn't my business."
"It was your business," Marcus said.
"I know that now."
I watched the two of them and thought about all the small moments that had added up to this kitchen, this table, this afternoon.
The argument about the seating chart.
The two days at my sister's house.
The phone call I would never forget as long as I lived.
*Nick is de@d.*
Three words.
That was all it had taken.
Nick came back into the kitchen.
He sat down across from me.
"Claire says the faked messages are significant," he said.
"Depending on how we proceed, they could support a fraud claim.
The inheritance was conditional on marriage.
She deliberately prevented the marriage from happening through deception." He looked at his mother.
"That's not a gray area."
Susan turned from the window.
"You're going to take legal action against your own mother."
"I'm going to find out what my options are."
"Over money."
"Over two months," Nick said.
"Over what you did to her." He gestured toward me.
"Over what you did to me.
The money is almost beside the point."
"It is not beside the point.
It was never beside the point.
That money was your grandfather's, and he built it over a lifetime, and I was not going to watch it walk out the door with someone who—"
"Who what?" I said.
Susan looked at me.
"Who what, Susan?
Finish the sentence."
Her jaw tightened.
"Someone I didn't know."
"You had two years to know me."
"I had two years of watching my son change.
Watching him make his world smaller and smaller until it was just the two of you.
Watching him pull away from this family."
"That's what happens when people fall in love," I said.
"That's not a warning sign.
That's just life."
"Not in this family."
"Then maybe this family needed to change."
The room went very still.
Susan looked at me for a long moment.
Something moved behind her eyes — not softening, not quite, but a recognition of some kind.
Like she was seeing me clearly for the first time and finding the view more complicated than she'd expected.
"You're not going to forgive me," she said.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"I haven't decided.
But I need you to understand something." I kept my voice even.
"I didn't come here today to fight you.
I came here to return a package.
I came here because I was tired of being hated by someone I'd never wronged.
I came here to try to make peace with the mother of a man I loved." I looked at her.
"And instead I found out that he's alive.
That you took two months of our lives.
That you looked me in the eye and told me he was gone and then went back to the hospital and held his hand."
Susan said nothing.
"I need you to understand what that was," I said.
"Not the legal part.
Not the money.
Just — what that was.
As one person to another."
The clock in the hallway ticked.
"I understand," Susan said.
Her voice was different.
Smaller.
It wasn't an apology.
But it was the first true thing she had said all afternoon.
Nick reached across the table and took my hand.
I looked down at his fingers over mine.
Two months ago I had stood in my kitchen and screamed until my sister came running.
Two months ago I had packed away the things that smelled like him because I couldn't bear to look at them.
Two months ago I had stopped eating properly and stopped sleeping properly and told myself every morning that it would eventually hurt less.
His hand was warm.
Marcus stood up and quietly left the room.
Richard followed him.
Susan remained at the window for another moment.
Then she walked out of the kitchen without a word, and her footsteps went down the hall, and a door closed softly somewhere in the back of the house.
Nick and I sat alone at the table.
"I don't know where we go from here," he said.
"Neither do I."
"I want to figure it out."
"So do I." I looked at him.
"But not tonight.
Tonight is too much."
He nodded.
"Okay."
"I need to go home.
I need to call my sister.
I need to sit somewhere quiet and let this be real for a while."
"I'll walk you out."
We stood up.
He didn't let go of my hand.
At the front door, he stopped.
"Hannah.
The night before the accident.
The argument."
"It was about the seating chart," I said.
"It was a stupid argument.
I was stressed and I took it out on you and I left because I needed a night to calm down.
That was all it was."
He looked at me for a long time.
"I know," he said.
"I knew that.
Even then, I knew that."
I stepped outside.
The evening air was cool.
Nick's car was still parked at the curb, and the sight of it still did something strange to my chest.
"I'll call you tomorrow," he said from the doorway.
I turned back.
"Nick.
The solicitor.
Whatever you decide to do — make sure you're doing it for the right reason."
"What's the right reason?"
"Not the money.
Not revenge." I looked at him.
"Because what she did was wrong.
Because it can't just be allowed to have happened."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Yeah," he said.
"That's why."
I walked home.
I still had no idea what Susan's package had contained.
May you like
I realized, somewhere on the second block, that I had left it on the patio table.
I didn't go back for it.
