Chapter 4: The Woman Who Kept the Records
They left within the hour.
Rita wheeled her suitcase back across the foyer without looking at me.
Douglas carried his own bag and the smaller one that had been stacked on top, and he kept his eyes on the door the entire time.
Neither of them said goodbye.
The front door closed, and I stood in the foyer alone with the amendment and the sound of the house settling around me the way old houses do — small creaks, familiar pressure, the particular silence that belongs only to rooms that have held a great deal of living.
I sat down in Warren's chair.
I did not move for a long time.
The following morning I called my attorney, Patricia, before eight o'clock.
She picked up on the third ring, which told me she had been expecting to hear from me.
"I need to know where the amendment stands," I said.
"And I need to understand what Carter's exposure looks like if this woman pursues a claim."
"The amendment is solid," Patricia said.
"Signed, notarized, filed.
Nobody can touch it without your consent." A pause.
"As for the loan — that depends on what she has and what she wants.
Do you know her last name?"
"Not yet."
"Find out.
And Donna — before you do anything else, I want you to talk to Carter directly.
Not through Kendall.
Not through a message.
Sit across from him and let him tell you his version.
Because right now you have one side of this, and the side you have came from a woman who was using it as leverage."
I thought about that.
"You think Kendall was using it against me too.
Not just against him."
"I think Kendall is a person under a great deal of pressure who made a calculation," Patricia said carefully.
"Whether that calculation was cynical or desperate, I can't tell you.
But I'd want to know before I decided what it meant."
I called Carter at noon.
He answered on the first ring.
"I'll come to you," I said.
He was staying at a hotel on Meeting Street, twelve minutes from the house.
I found him in the lobby restaurant with a cup of coffee he hadn't touched and the look of a man who had not slept.
He stood when he saw me.
That small gesture — standing when his mother walked in — made something in my chest ache in a way I hadn't anticipated.
We sat.
"Tell me about Lydia," I said.
He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup.
"Her name is Lydia Marsh.
We were together for about eight months.
I was twenty-five.
I was trying to start a small import business with a partner who turned out to be completely unreliable, and I needed a cash infusion to cover a supplier payment before the whole thing collapsed." He stopped.
"I asked her.
She said yes.
I told her I would pay her back."
"And the business?"
"Failed.
The partner took the remaining capital and disappeared.
I lost everything I had put in and everything she had lent me." He looked at the table.
"I should have told her immediately.
I kept thinking I would find another way to cover it.
Months turned into a year.
By the time I admitted to myself that I couldn't repay her, we had already broken up and I convinced myself that the relationship ending had somehow also ended the debt." He paused.
"I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like something a twenty-five-year-old tells himself," I said.
"What happened fourteen months ago?"
His jaw tightened.
"She found me on LinkedIn.
Sent a message saying she had seen Warren's name in a business journal article about historic Charleston properties, put it together that he was my father, and wanted to discuss the loan.
I told her the estate was complicated and that I would be in touch."
"And were you?"
"No."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"Carter.
Did you tell Kendall any of this when it happened?"
"No."
"Why not?"
He was quiet.
"Because you were afraid she would do exactly what she did," I said.
"Use it."
He looked up.
Something shifted in his face.
"I don't know if that's fair to Kendall."
"Tell me what is fair to Kendall."
He set down the coffee cup.
"She's been unhappy for a long time, Mom.
Not because of me, not entirely.
Her parents have been financially unstable for years.
Her father had a health scare eighteen months ago.
She has been carrying all of it and I have not been as present as I should have been.
When Lydia contacted her, she had three weeks of sitting alone with the information and no one to talk to except Rita and Douglas.
And Rita and Douglas saw an opportunity."
I sat back in my chair.
"So your wife is genuinely struggling."
"Yes."
"And her parents exploited that struggling to try to move into my house."
"Also yes."
"And you let them, because you were afraid of what Kendall would do with what she knew."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
I reached into my bag and set a small notepad on the table.
"I need Lydia Marsh's contact information.
Whatever you have."
Carter looked at the notepad.
"Why?"
"Because I am going to call her myself."
His head came up sharply.
"Mom—"
"Not to threaten her.
Not to make this worse.
I want to understand what she actually wants." I held his gaze.
"Patricia thinks Kendall may have shaped the story in a particular direction.
I want to hear the original before I decide anything."
May you like
Carter stared at the notepad for a long moment.
Then he picked up his phone.
