He had found me inconvenient. I was the living obstacle between his daughter and a property he had already begun to imagine as available.
I picked up the flash drive and put it in my pocket.
Marcus stepped forward. “Mom, wait. Don’t just plug it in. We should—”
“We?”
He stopped.
“There is no we in this part,” I said.
I closed the door with him still standing on the porch.
Inside, my heart pounded hard enough to hear. I walked to Arthur’s study, a room I had barely touched since his death. His desk still held a brass lamp, a wooden letter opener, and the old computer Marcus had set up for me two Christmases ago.
I did not plug the flash drive into it.
Arthur had taught me caution. Instead, I called my attorney, a woman named Beatrice Shaw who had handled our estate papers after Arthur died. She was brisk, clever, and allergic to nonsense.
When I explained the letter and the flash drive, she was silent for several seconds.
Then she said, “Do not access the drive yourself. Put it in an envelope. Photograph the envelope. Bring it to my office today.”
“I thought so.”
“And Elaine?”
“Yes?”
“Do not speak to Nora without a witness or a recording of your own, depending on what is legal and appropriate. People who manufacture a story do not stop because they are embarrassed.”
I looked at Arthur’s photograph on the desk. He was smiling at the camera, one hand raised as if caught mid-wave.
“No,” I said. “I suppose they don’t.”
By three that afternoon, I sat in Beatrice’s office while her assistant made copies of the consultation letter. The flash drive went into an evidence envelope. Beatrice read the document with a tightening mouth.
“This is preliminary,” she said. “But it is not harmless.”
“Can they do anything?”
“Not easily. Not with your records, your doctors, your finances, and frankly, your obvious competence. But the edited recordings concern me.”
“They were trying to make me look confused.”
“That appears to be the strategy.”
The word strategy made me feel strangely calm. Pain was foggy. Strategy had edges.
Beatrice drafted three letters that same day. One to Marcus and Nora demanding return or destruction of any recordings and documents involving me. One to the law firm requesting preservation of all records connected to the consultation. One updating my estate plan so Marcus no longer held the authority I had once given him in an emergency.
That last signature hurt.
Beatrice saw it.
“You can love your son and still remove his access,” she said.
I signed.
On Wednesday, Nora came to my house.
I saw her through the window before she reached the porch. She wore a cream coat and oversized sunglasses though the sky was cloudy. Her hair was pulled into the polished knot she used when she wanted to look calm. Marcus was not with her.
She knocked once. Then again. Then tried the handle.
The new lock held.
I opened the door with the chain in place.
Her sunglasses came off. Her eyes were red, but I did not know whether from crying or fury.
“Elaine,” she said. “This has gone too far.”
“You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving until you hear me.”
“I’ve
