Chapter 7: The Part Where Rachel Fights Back
She called at seven the next morning.
I was still in the hotel room we had booked for the night — a modest place two streets from the station, the kind with thin curtains and a kettle that took four minutes to boil.
Chloe was asleep in the other bed, her yellow ribbon on the nightstand.
I almost didn't answer.
"You ruined my life," Rachel said.
No greeting.
No pause.
"Everything I built.
Everything I planned.
You walked in there with your sad face and your little girl and you destroyed it."
"I didn't plan anything, Rachel."
"Don't." Her voice was raw.
"Don't do that.
Don't stand there being reasonable and calm and—" She stopped.
I heard her breathing.
"You always did that.
Even as a kid.
You'd just stand there being quiet and everyone would feel sorry for you and I'd be the one who looked wrong."
"You were wrong last night."
"I needed that money." Her voice cracked slightly.
"You don't understand.
You have no idea what I owe, what I've been managing, what it took to—"
"You could have asked me."
Silence.
"If you needed money," I said, "you could have come to me.
I didn't have much.
But I would have helped you.
You're my sister."
More silence.
Longer this time.
"You're going to say that now," she said finally.
"After everything."
"I'm saying it because it's true."
"It doesn't matter anymore." The rawness in her voice hardened back into something controlled.
"Logan's father is going to file whatever he's going to file.
Fine.
But I want you to know something, Valerie.
I want you to know that I have a recording too.
Of a conversation you had with Dad two months before he died.
Where you told him the estate should go to you because I had never contributed to the family the way you had."
My stomach dropped.
"That conversation happened," I said carefully.
"But that's not what I said."
"That's what it sounds like."
"Rachel—"
"I'm going to use it," she said.
"If Edmund files that report, I'm going to use it.
And it will make you look like you spent years positioning yourself for the inheritance.
It will make everything Chloe did last night look coached." Her voice was steady now.
Deliberate.
"Think about how that looks.
An elementary school teacher who coached her eight-year-old daughter to walk into a wedding and destroy her aunt's marriage for money."
I sat on the edge of the hotel bed.
Chloe was still asleep.
One arm was thrown over the pillow.
Her ribbon was a small yellow curl on the nightstand.
"You would do that," I said.
"You would use a recording of me talking to our dying father to protect yourself from fraud charges."
"I would do what I need to do."
"All right," I said.
"All right?" She sounded thrown.
"That's all you have to say?"
"I need to go, Rachel.
Chloe will be awake soon."
"Valerie—"
"I'll talk to Logan's attorney on Monday." I kept my voice even.
"You should talk to yours."
I ended the call.
I sat there for a moment in the thin morning light, the kettle beginning to rattle on the counter.
Then I picked up my phone again and called Edmund Montgomery.
He answered on the second ring.
"She has a recording," I said.
"Of a conversation I had with my father.
She's going to use it."
"I know," Edmund said.
"She called Logan forty minutes ago and told him the same thing." A pause.
"She also called the Newport Gazette.
Gave them a version of last night's events that puts you at the center of a scheme to defraud her."
My chest tightened.
"The story will run tomorrow morning unless we move first," he said.
"I've already spoken with our media attorney." Another pause.
"Valerie, I need to ask you something.
The conversation with your father — do you remember it clearly?"
"Yes."
"Was it recorded with your knowledge?"
"No."
"Do you know who recorded it?"
I thought about it.
The conversation had been in my father's hospital room.
Late afternoon.
My mother had been in the corridor.
"I think I do," I said.
Edmund was quiet for a moment.
"Can you be in Newport by Monday morning?"
I looked at Chloe's ribbon on the nightstand.
"Yes," I said.
May you like
"Good." His voice was calm.
"Bring the letter."
