Chapter 4
"Mr. Carter," Claire said. "I'm so sorry."
I stood up slowly. My legs were steady, which surprised some part of me. "Don't be," I said. "You just saved my life."
I drove back to San Francisco in the particular silence of a man who is not in shock because shock requires a version of disbelief he does not have access to. Everything I had heard was consistent with things I had been choosing not to examine. Vanessa's careful attention to my finances in the months since the engagement, the questions phrased as concern, the suggestions about simplifying my accounts that I had interpreted as efficiency-mindedness. Marissa's sudden renewed interest in visiting, the long dinners that kept arriving at the subject of the lake house, the gentle repeated observations that managing two properties alone was a lot for a man my age. The way both of them, always together, always careful, had made me feel so known and so loved that the idea of questioning it had felt like an act of ingratitude toward the people holding me up.
I had been lonely. They had known I was lonely, and they had used it with the specific precision of people who understand that grief makes a person's defenses porous in exactly the ways that require exploiting.
My attorney's name was Daniel Park, and he had handled my affairs for eighteen years, since before Margaret died, since before the children were adults, since back when the lake house was just a cabin we drove to in the summers and not a property with a assessed value that would make a young couple's eyes change when they thought you weren't watching. I called him from the car, from the parking lot of a rest stop off the interstate, and I told him what I had heard without omitting anything.
Daniel asked one question. "Does Claire still have the original file?"
"She sent it to me while I was sitting in her office," I said. "It's on my phone and backed up to her cloud account."
May you like
"Don't do anything with the lake house transfer documents," he said. "Don't sign anything, don't respond to any requests about the accounts, don't have any conversation with Ethan or Marissa or Vanessa about finances until we've spoken in person. Can you come in tomorrow morning?"
"Eight o'clock," I said.
