Chapter 3: What Emma Knew
Diana's hand moved toward the envelope.
Margaret's closed over it first.
"That isn't for you," Margaret said.
Her voice was quiet.
The kind of quiet that doesn't need volume.
Diana pulled her hand back.
Her smile stayed on her face, but something behind her eyes shifted.
"Nathan." She turned to me.
"You don't know this woman.
She walks in off the street, makes a scene in front of your guests, upsets Oliver — and you're just going to stand there?"
I looked at Oliver.
He was still on the floor.
He hadn't let go of the locket.
He was watching Margaret the way he used to watch Emma when she read to him — like he was afraid she might disappear if he moved.
"Oliver," I said.
"Come here."
He stood up slowly and walked to me.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
"Can we sit down somewhere?" I asked Margaret.
"Absolutely not," Diana said.
"I wasn't asking you."
The silence that followed was the first honest thing that had happened all evening.
A few of the guests near the far table had stopped pretending not to listen.
Diana's mother, seated at the end of the room, set down her fork.
Margaret nodded toward a pair of chairs near the window, away from the main tables.
I guided Oliver with me.
Margaret followed.
Diana didn't move for a moment.
Then her heels clicked across the floor behind us.
"I have a right to be part of this conversation," she said.
"You dropped my son's locket into a cake," I said.
"Sit down or leave.
Those are the two options."
Her mouth opened.
Then closed.
She sat.
Margaret placed the envelope on the small table between us.
She didn't open it yet.
"How much did Emma tell you about her family?" she asked.
"Almost nothing," I said.
"She said her parents were gone.
I assumed she meant they had passed."
"She said that because she was told to." Margaret's hands folded in her lap.
"When Emma was nineteen, she told her father something he didn't want to hear.
He gave her a choice.
Agree to stay silent, or leave and never come back.
She left."
"What did she tell him?"
Margaret looked at Oliver for a moment.
He was listening.
His eyes were steady.
"She told him she had found documents in his office.
Financial records.
Transfers going back years.
Money that didn't belong to him."
"What kind of money?"
"The kind that belongs to other people," Margaret said.
"Specifically, to a family trust.
Emma's grandmother had set it up.
It was meant for Emma, for her education, for her future.
Her father had been drawing from it for eleven years."
Oliver shifted beside me.
"Was he stealing?"
Margaret looked at him.
"Yes."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"Nothing," Margaret said.
"Because Emma never told anyone except me.
She was afraid.
She was young.
And she loved him, even after everything." She paused.
"But she kept the documents."
My chest tightened.
"The documents still exist?"
"They exist," Margaret said.
"Emma mailed them to me four weeks before she passed.
Along with a letter explaining everything." She touched the envelope.
"And a name."
"Whose name?"
Margaret's eyes moved to Diana.
Not quickly.
Deliberately.
"The name of the person Emma caught going through her files two months before she got sick.
The person who knew about the documents.
The person who had been asking questions about the trust."
Oliver looked up at me.
Diana's wine glass was on the far table.
From where I sat, I could see her hand resting beside it.
May you like
Perfectly still.
"Open the envelope," I said.
