Chapter 5: What Patricia Kept
Patricia lived forty minutes from Karen's office, in a small house at the end of a cul-de-sac with a garden that had gone slightly wild at the edges.
She opened the door before I reached the step, as if she had been watching from the window.
She was in her late sixties.
She had Eleanor's bone structure but none of Eleanor's hardness — the same sharp cheekbones, the same grey eyes, but softer, as if time had worn the angles down rather than sharpening them.
"Come in," she said.
"I made tea.
I didn't know what else to do."
She led me to a small sitting room.
Two cups already on the table.
A manila envelope beside them, the flap tucked in rather than sealed.
"How long have you known?" I asked.
"About the documents?
Three weeks." She sat down across from me.
"About the plan in general — longer.
I didn't understand what I was seeing until recently."
"What did you see?"
She wrapped both hands around her cup.
"Eleanor called a family meeting eight months ago.
David was there.
Dana was there.
I was invited because Eleanor said it was about the trust — updating beneficiaries, that sort of thing.
I'm listed in the original trust from their father's estate, so it made sense that I'd be included." She paused.
"But the meeting wasn't about beneficiaries.
It was about you."
I kept my hands still.
"Eleanor said David's marriage had become a liability.
That's the word she used.
Liability.
She said that you had been making it difficult for David to fulfill his obligations to the family business, that you were emotionally unpredictable, and that steps needed to be taken to protect Mia's future." Patricia looked up.
"She had a lawyer there.
Not David's current attorney.
Someone else.
A man I'd never seen before."
"What did David say?"
Patricia set her cup down.
"He said he needed more time."
The room was quiet.
"He didn't say no," I said.
"No.
He didn't say no." Her voice was careful, not unkind.
"He said he needed more time.
Eleanor said time was something they didn't have.
The lawyer said the documents were ready whenever David gave the word." She reached for the envelope.
"I took photographs.
On my phone, under the table.
I didn't know why exactly — I just knew something was wrong."
She opened the envelope and slid out a set of printed photographs.
They were slightly blurred, taken at an angle, but clear enough.
A table covered in papers.
The lawyer's hands pointing at a line near the bottom of a document.
Eleanor's face, composed and certain.
David's face, looking down.
And on the document the lawyer was pointing to — a signature line with my name printed beneath it.
Blank.
Waiting.
"This was eight months ago," I said.
"Yes."
"The signature on the guardianship document was dated seven months ago."
Patricia nodded slowly.
"I know."
I looked at the photograph of David's face.
He was looking down at the blank signature line.
His expression wasn't reluctant.
It wasn't horrified.
It was the expression of a man doing arithmetic.
"He gave the word," I said.
Patricia didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
I picked up the photographs carefully.
"Can I keep these?"
"I had them printed for you," she said.
"I have the originals on my phone.
I'll send them to your attorney directly if she needs them."
I looked at her across the table.
"Why are you doing this?
Eleanor is your sister."
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
She looked at her hands.
"I have a daughter," she said.
"She's thirty-four.
When she was six years old, my mother sl@pped her at a family dinner for talking back." She looked up.
"I didn't stand up.
I told myself it wasn't that serious.
I told myself it was just how things were in our family." Her voice didn't waver, but something behind it did.
"My daughter and I didn't speak for eleven years.
We're fine now.
We worked through it.
But I spent eleven years knowing exactly why she left and not being able to say I blamed her."
She picked up her cup again.
"I'm not going to do that twice," she said.
I drove back to Ruth's apartment with the photographs on the passenger seat.
I called Karen from the parking lot.
"I have evidence," I said.
"Photographs from inside the meeting where they planned this.
Taken eight months ago.
David was present.
He was shown the blank signature line."
May you like
Karen was quiet for exactly two seconds.
"Get here now," she said.
