Chapter 6: The Thing Margaret Said Daniel Didn't Know
He was asleep in the chair when I made the decision.
I reached over and picked up his phone.
The screen lit up again.
I read the full message.
*I know you're angry, but there's something about Rebecca you still don't know.
Something she never told you.
Call me before you do anything you can't take back.
This changes everything.*
I set the phone down.
Nora was asleep against my chest.
The room was dim.
The hallway outside was quiet.
I thought about waking Daniel.
I thought about ignoring it entirely.
I thought about what kind of woman sends a message like that — engineered to sound like a warning, designed to create doubt, timed for exactly the moment when her son might be deciding to cut her off.
I did not wake Daniel.
In the morning, he found the message himself.
He read it twice.
Then he set the phone face-down on the chair.
"She's doing it again," he said.
"I know."
"Creating a reason I have to call her."
"Yes."
He looked at me.
"I'm not calling her."
"Okay."
"Whatever she thinks she knows about Rebecca — it doesn't matter.
It doesn't change what she did yesterday."
"I agree."
He was quiet for a moment.
"But you want to know what it is," he said.
I didn't answer right away.
"I want to know if it's real," I said.
"Or if it's another thing she invented."
He picked up his phone.
Not to call Margaret.
He opened his messages and forwarded her text to Rebecca with one line underneath: *My mother says there's something about you I don't know.
Do you have any idea what she means?*
Rebecca's reply came within four minutes.
*Yes.
I know exactly what she means.
I think it's time I told you myself.*
She called an hour later.
Daniel put it on speaker again without me asking.
"When Margaret and I were still talking regularly," Rebecca began, "she told me something about why she thought we should have stayed together.
She said it wasn't just about love or history." A pause.
"She said your father had changed his will before he d*ed.
That he'd left a condition."
Daniel went very still.
"What condition?"
"She said he'd left a clause stating that a portion of the estate — the property in Vermont, and a share of the investment account — would only transfer to you if you were still married to me at the time of his death, or if you reconciled with me within five years of the divorce."
The silence in the room was absolute.
"That's not possible," Daniel said.
"I saw the will.
My lawyer reviewed it."
"Margaret told me there was a second document.
A codicil.
She said she'd kept it private because she was waiting to see if you'd come back to me on your own."
"A codicil." Daniel's voice was flat.
"She hid a codicil to my father's will."
"That's what she told me.
I don't know if it's true.
I don't know if she was telling me to make me feel like I was owed something.
But I've been sitting on it for two years and I think you deserve to know."
Daniel stood up.
He walked to the window again.
This time he stayed there longer.
"If that's real," he said quietly, "she's been controlling this from the beginning.
The calls to you.
The photograph.
Coming here yesterday.
All of it."
"Yes," Rebecca said.
"I think so."
"She wasn't trying to reunite us because she loved you," I said.
"She was trying to protect the inheritance."
The word sat in the room.
"Rebecca," Daniel said.
"Did she ever show you this document?"
"No.
She only described it."
"Did she say where it was?"
"She said she kept it at the house.
In your father's study.
In the locked drawer of his desk."
Daniel turned from the window.
His father's desk was still in Margaret's house.
In the room she'd kept exactly as he left it.
"Thank you," he said.
"For telling me."
After he hung up, he stood in the middle of the room and didn't speak for almost a full minute.
May you like
Then he looked at me.
"I need to go to her house."
