Chapter 4: What Caroline Already Knew
I didn't sleep that night.
I lay in the guest room that had been given to me on my first day — a room that still felt borrowed, still felt like somewhere I was only allowed to exist temporarily — and I stared at the ceiling and thought about a woman named Margaret who had looked into my father's eyes in 1989 and told him his daughter was d*ad.
By six in the morning I was dressed.
By six-thirty I was in the kitchen.
Caroline was already there.
She was standing at the counter with a coffee cup, still in her robe, and she looked at me the way you look at something you were hoping wouldn't still be there.
"You're up early," she said.
"Couldn't sleep."
She turned back to the counter.
"Neither could I."
I poured myself coffee.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
The kitchen was large and quiet and full of morning light that felt like it belonged to someone else.
"I want to ask you something," I said.
"I'm sure you do."
"Do you know a woman named Margaret?"
Caroline's hand stopped moving.
Just for a second.
Then she set her cup down on the counter and turned around.
"Where did you hear that name?"
"The documents my father left."
Her jaw tightened.
"Margaret is a family friend.
She's known us for decades.
Whatever your father wrote about her—"
"He wrote that she told him I d!ed at birth."
The silence that followed was very long.
Caroline looked at me.
Her expression didn't collapse.
It hardened.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Then explain it to me."
"There's nothing to explain.
Margaret has been part of this family since before I was born.
She loved my father.
Whatever that lawyer told you, he's spinning it to justify a will that was written by a man who was dying and not thinking clearly."
"He changed the will six days after I arrived," I said.
"That doesn't sound like someone who wasn't thinking clearly.
That sounds like someone who finally had the chance to do what he'd wanted to do for years."
"He was grieving.
He was medicated.
He was—"
"He was my father too, Caroline."
She flinched.
It was small, but I saw it.
"Don't do that," she said.
"Don't stand in this house and claim a relationship you had for seven days."
"I didn't choose to be kept away for thirty-one years."
"And I didn't choose any of this either." Her voice cracked — just once, just briefly — and then she pulled it back.
"I built my life around this family.
I gave up things you will never understand to be here, to take care of him, to manage everything while he got sicker.
And then you walk in, and in one week he rewrites everything."
"I didn't ask him to."
"It doesn't matter what you asked." She picked up her cup again.
Her hand was steady now.
"I'm contesting the will.
I've already spoken to my attorney.
And Margaret will testify on my behalf that my father was not of sound mind in his final days."
I set my cup down on the counter.
"She'll testify," I said slowly.
"The woman who told my father I was d*ad.
She'll stand in a courtroom and speak about his state of mind."
"Yes."
"And you're comfortable with that."
Caroline met my eyes.
"Completely."
I walked out of the kitchen.
I didn't say another word.
I went back upstairs, sat on the edge of the bed, and called Gerald Marsh.
He picked up on the second ring.
"She knows about Margaret," I said.
"And she's not afraid of her."
A pause.
"I was concerned that might be the case."
"What aren't you telling me, Gerald?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Your father left one more thing," he said.
"Not in either envelope.
He gave it to me directly, with instructions to hold it until you called me with exactly this kind of news."
"What is it?"
"A recording," Gerald said.
May you like
"Your father made it three weeks before he died.
I think you need to hear it before this goes any further."
