Chapter 6: What Nora Voss Remembered
Nora Voss lived in a small house forty minutes outside the city, on a street lined with older trees that had grown wide enough to touch each other overhead.
Marina drove.
I sat in the passenger seat and watched the neighborhood change from glass and concrete to something quieter.
Nora answered the door before we knocked.
She was in her late sixties, gray-haired, with the careful posture of someone who had spent years making herself take up less space.
She looked at me for a long moment before she stepped back to let us in.
"You look like him," she said.
"Around the eyes."
I didn't answer that.
Not yet.
We sat at her kitchen table.
She made tea without asking whether we wanted any.
Marina set a small recorder on the table and Nora nodded at it without objecting.
"How did Celeste Grant find you?" I asked.
"I don't know exactly.
I've lived quietly.
I didn't contact your father's estate after he passed — I knew the codicil had been set aside and I didn't want to cause trouble." She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"But someone found me.
About six months ago I started getting letters.
No return address.
Just reminders that I existed.
That the codicil existed.
That certain people might be very interested in the story."
"Someone was building leverage," Marina said.
"Yes.
I didn't understand it at the time.
I thought it might be journalists." She looked at me.
"Then Celeste came to the door."
"What did she want?"
"She wanted me to sign a statement.
That your father was of sound mind when he signed the codicil.
That the physician's declaration was false.
That I had been cheated out of my inheritance by your attorney."
I set my mug down.
"She wanted to reopen the estate."
"She said if I signed, she would make sure I received what your father intended.
Two million dollars." Nora's voice was steady but her hands were not.
"She said you had stolen it from me and from him."
"And when you refused?"
"She told me I would regret it.
Then she left." Nora looked at the table.
"I called you an hour later."
"The physician who filed the declaration that the codicil was invalid," I said.
"Do you know who he was?"
"Dr.
**Harlan Webb**.
He was your father's personal physician for fifteen years."
"Is he still practicing?"
"He retired two years ago.
But he's alive.
He lives about twenty minutes from here, actually.
I've seen him at the market a few times."
Marina and I looked at each other.
"Ms.
Voss," I said.
"I want to ask you something directly, and I need you to answer me honestly."
She met my eyes.
"All right."
"Did my father know about you?
About whether there was a child?"
Nora was quiet for a long moment.
The refrigerator hummed.
A branch moved against the kitchen window.
"There was no child," she said finally.
"We were together for two years when we were both very young.
It ended when he met your mother.
He was a good man.
He found me again near the end of his life because he said he wanted to make sure I was all right." Her voice thinned slightly.
"The codicil was his way of doing that.
It wasn't about a secret family.
It was about an old kindness."
Something in my chest settled.
"Then why did Raymond have it set aside?"
Nora looked at her hands.
"I don't know.
I was never told why.
I received a letter from his office saying the codicil had been successfully contested and the estate had closed.
I assumed your father's family had objected."
"I never knew it existed," I said.
She looked up.
"Raymond acted alone," I said.
"And I don't yet know why."
My phone buzzed on the table.
A message from Raymond's office — not Raymond himself.
His assistant.
*Mr.
Ellis asked me to let you know he will be unavailable for the remainder of the week.
He is dealing with a personal matter.*
Marina read it over my shoulder.
May you like
"He's running," she said quietly.
I was already dialing.
