Chapter 7: The Folder on the Table
I didn't move from the top of the staircase until they had gone into the study and closed the door.
Then I went to find Gideon.
He was in the north sitting room with a phone to his ear.
He looked up when I came in and ended the call without explanation.
"What happened?"
I told him.
All of it.
The man in the gray suit, the leather case, the folder, the words diminished capacity.
Gideon sat down.
He didn't speak for a moment.
"She's going to try to have the will contested," he said.
"She doesn't know it's already changed.
She's trying to stop something that's already done."
"That won't matter to her.
If she can establish that my father wasn't competent when he signed, the whole document is vulnerable." He set his phone on the table.
"Who was the man?"
"I don't know.
He had a leather case.
She said she needed to know if it could be contested on grounds of diminished capacity."
Gideon stood up.
"I need to call the solicitor."
"There's something else," I said.
He stopped.
"Your father told me the will was changed three weeks ago.
He also told me Sera has been using the medical trust to control staffing.
The agency fees, the medication orders — all of it went through her."
Gideon's face went through something I couldn't fully read.
"She approved your placement," he said slowly.
"She approved all of them."
"Yes."
"Which means she chose nurses she believed she could remove."
"And when she couldn't remove them through the trust mechanisms, she found other ways." I looked at him.
"The notebook in the box had eight names.
Three years of nurses.
All of them gone."
He walked to the window.
His hands went into his pockets.
"I hired you directly," he said.
"I bypassed the normal approval process because the agency said you were the best available and my father's last nurse had left without notice.
I didn't go through Sera."
"She didn't expect me," I said.
"No." He turned around.
"She didn't expect me to move quickly enough to cut her out of the process.
And by the time she realized you were already in the house—"
"She had to find another way."
The word another sat between us.
He crossed to the desk in the corner and opened the top drawer.
He removed a small device — flat, black, no larger than a matchbook.
He set it on the table.
"I placed this in the study two hours ago," he said.
"After she came back early from lunch."
I looked at it.
"Is that a recorder?"
"Yes."
"Is that legal?"
"In this jurisdiction, one-party consent applies.
I am a party to any conversation that takes place in my own home." He looked at the door.
"If she's in there right now telling that man what she did to those stairs, I will have it."
"And if she's careful?"
"Sera is always careful," he said.
"But she's also frightened.
Frightened people make mistakes."
He picked up his phone and dialed.
While it rang, I looked at the closed study door across the hall.
The house was very quiet.
Somewhere upstairs, Renaldo Marquetti was reading his book by the window, waiting for the right moment he had already set in motion.
The solicitor answered.
Gideon said: "She's moving to contest.
I need you to prepare a full capacity assessment from the date of signing.
Every document, every witness, every note from his physician." A pause.
"Yes.
Today."
He ended the call.
Then he looked at me.
"I need you to do something," he said.
"And I need you to understand that you don't have to."
"What is it?"
"I need you to go back to your normal routine tomorrow morning.
Medication tray.
Back stairs."
The silence stretched.
"You want her to think it didn't work," I said.
"I want her to think nothing has changed.
That you're still here, still vulnerable, still using the same route." He held my gaze.
"If she believes the fall didn't frighten you off, she'll move again.
And the next time she moves, I'll be watching."
I thought about the notebook.
The eight names.
The question mark beside mine.
"And if she does something before you can stop it?"
"I won't let that happen."
"You can't promise that."
"No," he said.
"I can't."
He said it plainly, without softening it, and somehow that was the thing that made me trust him.
"All right," I said.
He nodded.
Then, from across the hall, the study door opened.
Sera stepped out.
She saw us through the open doorway — me standing near the table, Gideon with his phone in his hand.
Her eyes moved between us with the speed of a woman who had spent her life reading what she wasn't supposed to see.
"I didn't realize you were in here," she said.
"We were talking," Gideon said.
"About?"
"Father's medication schedule." He looked at her calmly.
"Is there something you need?"
Her eyes moved to me one more time.
"No," she said.
"Nothing."
She walked toward the staircase.
At the bottom step, she paused with her hand on the railing.
"Adeline," she said, without turning around.
"Do be careful tomorrow morning."
She went up.
The words hung in the room like smoke.
Gideon looked at the recorder on the table.
May you like
"She's not frightened enough yet," he said quietly.
"But she will be."
