Chapter 8: What Vanessa Left Behind
I didn't hear from Vanessa for eleven days.
Then she called on a Wednesday evening while Noah and I were eating dinner.
I let it ring.
She called again twenty minutes later.
I let that one ring too.
The third time, I answered.
"I'm not going to ask you to forgive me," she said.
"I know better than that."
"Then what are you calling for?"
"There's something I didn't tell you the other night.
Something that isn't in Martin's folder."
I set down my fork.
"Noah, go watch something in your room for a bit."
He looked at me, then at the phone, and went without arguing.
"Talk," I said.
"The man who approached me eighteen months ago — I told you it was Martin.
That was true.
But Martin wasn't acting alone when he came to me.
He was sent by someone."
"Sent by who?"
"Your mother has a brother.
Your uncle.
Raymond."
I hadn't heard that name in years.
Raymond Calloway had been absent from our lives since before my father passed — a falling-out over something I had never been fully told about.
"Raymond has been in contact with your mother throughout all of this," Vanessa said.
"He's the one who identified me as a potential — as someone who could be useful.
He'd been watching you for a while.
He knew about Noah's mother leaving, knew you were isolated, knew you'd be vulnerable to someone who seemed right."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"He targeted me."
"He targeted the estate.
You were the path to it." Her voice was flat, not cruel — just factual.
"Raymond believes he has a claim to part of your father's estate.
A verbal promise your father allegedly made years ago.
Nothing in writing.
He was hoping that if the will stayed buried and the assets moved through your mother and then through me after the marriage, he could collect his share quietly."
"How much of a share?"
"He told Martin he was owed a hundred and fifty thousand."
"Based on nothing."
"Based on his word against a de@d man's."
I stood up from the table and walked to the window.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
A long pause.
"Because Raymond called me this week.
He wanted to know if there was still a path forward now that the wedding was off.
He wanted to know if I'd be willing to—" She stopped.
"He wanted to know if I'd continue working with him independently."
"And?"
"And I told him no." Another pause.
"I recorded the call."
I turned around.
"You recorded it."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I spent eighteen months doing something I'm not proud of," she said, "and I would like to do one thing I am proud of before this is completely over." Her voice was steady.
"I'll send the recording to your attorney.
You can use it however you need to."
I stood at the window for a moment.
"Send it to Grace Okafor.
I'll let her know it's coming."
"Okay."
"Vanessa."
"Yes."
"It doesn't fix it."
"I know," she said.
"I know it doesn't."
The call ended.
I stood in the kitchen for a long moment, looking at Noah's half-finished plate on the table, his fork resting at an angle across the rim the way he always left it.
Then I called Grace.
"I'm going to forward you a recording," I said when she answered.
"It involves a man named Raymond Calloway.
He's my father's brother.
I think you'll want to hear it before we file."
A brief silence.
"How many people knew about this will?" she asked.
May you like
"More than I thought," I said.
"Apparently a lot more than I thought."
