“Of course he is.”
She looked up gently. “Mrs. Kincaid, did you sign a prenuptial agreement?”
“Yes.”
“Was there pressure?”
I remembered Helena’s dining room eleven years earlier. The crystal glasses. The white roses. Helena looking at me across the table and asking Grant why he had married a woman who looked like she still checked price tags.
I had signed because I loved him and because I was young enough to confuse sacrifice with proof.
“There was family,” I said.
The attorney’s expression told me she understood.
I kept Grant’s envelope unopened in the glove compartment. Twenty thousand dollars. Payment for unpleasant things. Payment for wiping his mother’s mouth when she could no longer swallow water. Payment for sleeping in a chair beside Helena’s bed so she would not wake afraid.
I could not touch it.
On the fifteenth day, a cream-colored letter arrived at the motel desk.
Marcy held it out with raised eyebrows. “Fancy paper.”
The envelope had my full married name written in black ink.
Mrs. Laurel Anne Kincaid.
My hands went cold before I opened it.
It was from Bellamy, Ross & Vale, Helena’s longtime attorneys.
I was required to attend the final estate reading the following Friday at ten in the morning.
Required.
Not invited.
Not requested.
Required.
I read the letter three times sitting on the motel bed while traffic hissed beyond the window. Grant had told me the estate was his. Everyone knew he was Helena’s only child. The papers had already begun describing him as the new controlling heir of Harborstone.
So why did Helena’s attorney need me there?
I almost did not go.
Pride told me not to give Grant another chance to look me over and measure my ruin. Exhaustion told me there was nothing left in that world for me except more proof that I had been disposable. But something else, softer and harder at once, made me fold the letter into my handbag.
Helena’s voice, weak but sharp, returned to me.
Bring me the leather writing case, Laurel. The brown one. Not the black.
It had been six days before she died. Her fingers were swollen. She could barely hold a pen. I thought she wanted to write a note to an old friend.
When I placed the case on her blanket, she touched the brass latch with the reverence of prayer.
“Don’t leave things unsaid,” she whispered.
I thought she meant apologies.
Maybe she had meant warnings.
On Friday, I wore the best clothes I had left: a navy dress from a thrift shop, low heels, and Helena’s blue cardigan under my coat. I almost removed it before entering the Kincaid building, but my hand stopped at the buttons.
She had asked me to wear it when she was scared.
That morning, I was scared enough for both of us.
Bellamy, Ross & Vale occupied the thirty-first floor of a glass tower overlooking the harbor. Everything inside smelled of waxed wood and quiet money. The receptionist looked at my name, then glanced at my coat, then forced her face smooth.
“Mr. Bellamy is expecting you.”
The conference room was already occupied when I entered.
Grant sat at the far end of the table with two advisers, his divorce attorney, and a woman I did not recognize.
