Chapter 6 - ELISE ARRIVES
My daughter arrived before Samuel.
Elise drove through the rain in forty minutes and came into the study wearing jeans, a coat over pajamas, and the expression of a woman who had spent two years waiting for one phone call.
She looked at Gwen.
Then at Chloe.
Then at me.
“Dad?”
“I’m all right.”
“Are you?”
It was the first honest question anyone had asked me in months.
I almost lied.
Then I said:
“No.”
Gwen folded her arms.
“Elise, before you attack me, perhaps ask why a housemaid is recording private conversations.”
Elise did not even glance at Chloe.
“I’ll ask after I hear the recording.”
That shook Gwen.
She was used to controlling the order of sympathy.
Elise refused the sequence.
Chloe played the audio again.
The sentence filled the study:
“He has to be gone before he changes the will.”
Elise went pale.
Gwen immediately said, “That is taken out of context.”
Elise looked at her.
“What context makes that sentence acceptable?”
No answer.
Samuel arrived with two people from his firm and a private security consultant he trusted.
He was seventy-one, thin, and looked like he had never once been fooled by charm.
He listened to the recording.
Asked where the glass was.
Asked who had touched it.
Asked whether I had consumed anything from it.
I had not.
He instructed everyone not to touch it further.
Then he asked Gwen one question.
“Who were you speaking to?”
“My sister.”
“What is her name?”
Gwen hesitated.
Samuel noticed.
So did Elise.
“So not your sister,” he said.
Gwen’s mouth tightened.
The security consultant moved toward the hall to preserve household camera footage.
That was when Gwen became truly afraid.
She had forgotten the cameras.
Or perhaps she believed she controlled them.
She turned toward me.
“Franklin, don’t do this.”
I looked at her.
“Do what?”
“Humiliate me.”
The word almost made me laugh.
Humiliate.
Not endanger.
Not betray.
Not forgive.
She was still thinking of how this would look.
Elise stepped beside me.
“You should leave the room, Gwen.”
“This is my home.”
My daughter looked at me.
I answered clearly:
“Not tonight.”
Gwen stared as if I had struck her.
For the first time, I saw the marriage as she saw it.
Not a relationship.
An address.
A position.
May you like
A set of keys.
And perhaps, soon, an inheritance.
