what was in the original, but I saw him take something from his office.”
I covered my mouth.
Agnes reached across the table, then stopped before touching me. “Mrs. Wren, there is more.”
I did not want more. But I had come for truth, and truth rarely stops where mercy would.
She took a breath. “Callum has been telling Maren that you are trying to have her declared incompetent so you can keep her inheritance. He says everyone who questions him is part of your plan. Friends. Doctors. Me.”
“Why keep you there, then?”
“Because I was useful after the miscarriages. Because I am quiet. Because he thought quiet meant harmless.”
For the first time, a hard edge entered her voice.
“My sister died married to a man who sounded like Callum. Soft in public. Surgical in private. By the time we understood what he had done to her mind, she no longer believed anyone who loved her. I will not watch that happen again.”
I gripped Maren’s bracelet until the moon charm cut into my palm.
“What do we do?”
“You need a lawyer who is not connected to Callum. And someone in law enforcement outside his circle.”
“His circle?”
“He golfs with a retired police captain. He mentions it whenever he wants staff to remember he is protected.”
“That does not mean every officer is corrupt.”
“No,” Agnes said. “But it means we do not hand him our warning before we have secured the evidence.”
I thought of Richard Hale, my husband’s old estate attorney. He had retired, but his daughter Naomi now ran the firm two counties over. She was sharp, discreet, and had once told me never to sign anything in a room where someone wanted me emotional.
“I know a lawyer,” I said.
“Call her from a phone he cannot trace.”
A movement near the ticket machines caught Agnes’s attention. Her face changed before I turned. It went still in a way that made my skin prickle.
“What?” I whispered.
She did not answer.
Across the terminal, Callum stood in a dark coat, holding a phone.
Maren’s phone.
He scanned the café with patient eyes.
I had seen that expression before at charity auctions when he looked over silent auction sheets, calculating value. Now he was calculating exits.
Agnes whispered, “He followed me.”
“Go,” I said.
“No. If I run, he knows.”
“He already knows.”
Callum’s gaze passed over our table once, moved on, then returned. Recognition warmed his face. He smiled like we had simply bumped into each other at a wedding.
My prepaid phone buzzed in my coat pocket.
I pulled it out with clumsy fingers.
A message from Maren’s number appeared.
Mom, please don’t make this harder. Come home with Callum.
I stared at it. Callum was still holding her phone across the terminal.
Then a second message arrived.
Unknown number.
Mom, it’s me. I’m upstairs in the bathroom. He doesn’t know I found Agnes’s old phone. Please help me before he comes back.
For one second, I felt every year of motherhood at once: Maren’s newborn weight in my arms, her first fever, her first heartbreak, her wedding day, the empty months, the closed gate, the note asking not to drink anything if she forgot.
Then fear burned away, leaving something
