“No.”
Her mouth tightened. “Elaine, you do not want to start a fight with me.”
“You started one yesterday.”
Her gaze flicked toward Mrs. Duvall’s house. The curtains shifted. Mrs. Duvall had always been terrible at pretending not to watch.
Marissa lowered her voice. “Your son signed everything. Do you understand that? Every paper. Every authorization. If this becomes ugly, he will not look innocent.”
My hand tightened on the edge of the door.
There it was. Not concern. Not embarrassment. A threat.
“What did you have him sign?” I asked.
Her face went still.
“I’m warning you as a courtesy.”
“No,” I said. “You’re warning me because there is something in those bank records you don’t want Daniel to see.”
For one second, the mask slipped.
Then she smiled.
It was worse than anger.
“You are a lonely old woman with a scratched pair of glasses and a dead husband’s paperwork,” she said. “Do not confuse that with power.”
I looked at her through the narrow gap.
“Yesterday, I might have believed you.”
I closed the door.
My knees trembled after, but I did not regret it.
Daniel called before lunch.
“I have the first response from the closing attorney,” he said. “Elaine, sit down.”
“I’m fine standing.”
“Sit down anyway.”
I sat.
“The proceeds from the sale did not go into Adrian and Marissa’s joint checking account.”
“Where did they go?”
“An account under a business name. Harbor Finch Interiors.”
I knew that name. Marissa had once ordered business cards embossed with it and hosted a launch party in the townhouse dining room. She had told everyone she would redesign homes for executives, though as far as I knew, she never finished a single paid project.
“I thought that business closed,” I said.
“It did. Two years ago.”
My kitchen seemed to grow colder.
Daniel continued. “Within forty-eight hours of the wire, three hundred eighty thousand dollars left that account.”
“To pay debts?”
“No. It went to a personal account in Charleston belonging to a man named Nolan Vance.”
The name landed without meaning.
“Do you know him?” Daniel asked.
“No.”
“Ask Adrian carefully. Do not accuse. Just ask.”
After we hung up, I walked through my house as if looking for something I had misplaced. I ended up in the back room, where old albums sat in a cedar chest beneath folded quilts.
I do not know why I pulled out Adrian and Marissa’s wedding album.
Maybe grief has its own instincts.
The album was heavy, bound in white linen that had yellowed at the corners. I carried it to the kitchen table and opened it to a page of smiling faces under strings of lights.
There was Adrian, young and handsome, his hand at Marissa’s waist. There was Graham, alive and proud, wiping his eyes in the background. There was me in a blue dress, holding flowers and trying not to cry because mothers are expected to be happy on wedding days even when they feel something leaving them.
I turned another page.
And there he was.
A man in a navy suit standing two rows behind Marissa during the reception toast. Narrow face. Silver watch. One hand in his pocket. Not looking at the bride and groom.
Looking at Marissa.
On the back of the
