Chapter 5: What Juliette Offered
They brought chairs from the reception tables and set them near the head table, and the ballroom became something between a courtroom and a crime scene while the wedding flowers slowly wilted in their arrangements and the champagne went flat in its glasses.
Elliot had moved to the far side of the room.
He sat with his jacket off and his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
His best man had tried to speak to him twice.
Both times Elliot had shaken his head without looking up.
Nora sat beside me.
She hadn't let go of the metal box.
Marcus was on the phone near the service corridor, speaking in a low voice to someone I couldn't hear.
The two colleagues who had blocked the door were still there, positioned with the particular stillness of people who had done this before.
Juliette stood near the floral arch that had been built for the ceremony.
The white roses behind her looked wrong now — too bright, too perfect, arranged for a day that no longer existed.
Her lawyer had moved to her side and was speaking quietly into her ear.
She listened without expression.
Then she said something back, and he nodded and crossed the room toward me.
"Ms.
Mercer," he said.
"My client would like a private word."
"No," Marcus said, from across the room, without looking up from his phone.
"Ms.
Mercer is not under any legal obligation—"
"She's not going anywhere near my client," Marcus said.
He ended his call and walked back toward us.
"If your client has something to say, she can say it here."
The lawyer adjusted his cuffs.
Then he walked back to Juliette and spoke to her again.
Juliette looked across the room at me.
Then she walked over herself.
She stopped about four feet away.
Close enough to speak quietly.
Far enough that it didn't look like surrender.
"I want to make you an offer," she said.
"I'm listening."
"Half." She said it simply, as though we were discussing a business arrangement over coffee.
"Half of everything.
The estate, the investments, the properties.
Split evenly.
You walk away from the criminal complaint, Marcus closes his files, and we both move forward."
I looked at her.
The emerald necklace caught the light from the chandelier above us.
Our mother's necklace.
I had not let myself look at it directly until now.
"That necklace belonged to me," I said.
Juliette's hand moved slightly toward her throat.
"It's part of the estate.
Under the split, you'd receive—"
"Take it off."
She stared at me.
"Take it off and put it on the table," I said.
"Then we can talk about your offer."
Something moved across her face.
Not embarrassment.
Not guilt.
Something colder — the recognition that she had miscalculated the distance between us.
She reached up and unclasped the necklace.
She set it on the head table next to the forged documents, next to my hospital bracelet, next to the photograph of herself holding a canister in a corridor fourteen minutes before the fire.
"Half," she said again.
"That's a fair offer, Caroline.
More than fair, given what the litigation would cost both of us."
"You forged my death certificate."
"I was seventeen—"
"You forged a second one last year.
You are not seventeen anymore."
Her jaw tightened.
"The fraud charge is a civil matter.
My lawyers will—"
"Nora," I said.
Nora looked up from her chair.
"Tell her what else is in the box."
Nora reached into the metal box and removed a folded piece of paper.
She didn't unfold it.
She just held it.
"What is that?" Juliette said.
"A letter," Nora said.
"Written by your mother.
Three weeks before she passed."
Juliette went very still.
"She knew," Nora said.
"She knew what you were planning to do with the estate.
She wrote it down.
She gave it to me because she didn't trust anyone else in this house." Nora's voice didn't waver.
"She asked me to give it to Caroline when the time came.
I've been waiting a long time for the time to come."
Juliette looked at the folded letter.
Then she looked at me.
"Whatever is in that letter," she said, "it changes nothing legally."
"You're probably right," I said.
"But your father is sitting ten feet away.
And every person in this room is going to watch him read it."
Juliette turned toward our father.
He was already looking at Nora.
"Give it to him," he said.
"Dad—"
"Give it to him, Nora."
Nora stood up and carried the letter across the marble floor to Douglas Mercer.
He unfolded it slowly.
His hands were not steady.
He read it once, and then he read it again, and then he set it on his knee and pressed his palm flat against it as though he could absorb the words through his skin.
When he looked up, he was not looking at Juliette.
He was looking at me.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Caroline.
I am so sorry."
It was the first time in years anyone in my family had said my name like it belonged to me.
Juliette's offer was still hanging in the air between us.
I didn't answer it.
May you like
I picked up the emerald necklace from the table and held it in my closed hand.
And I waited for Marcus to finish what he had come here to do.
