I set the phone face-down on the bed.
Louise appeared in the doorway.
She had her tablet under her arm.
“Mom?
Grandma made eggs.”
“I’ll be right down.”
She looked at me.
At the letter in my hands.
At the phone face-down on the bed.
“Is everything okay?”
I folded the letter carefully along Tom’s original creases.
“Your dad was very smart,” I said.
Louise considered this.
“I know.”
“He thought of everything.”
“I know,” she said again, simpler this time, like it was just a fact about the world.
I put the letter back in the envelope.
“Go eat,” I said.
“I need to make a call.”
She went.
I picked up my phone, turned it over, and opened my contacts.
I called Diane.
She picked up on the second ring.
“I read the letter,” I said.
“I thought you might have.” A pause.
“Daniel reached out to you.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Twenty minutes ago,” I said.
“He contacted me yesterday,” Diane said.
“Wanting to discuss the estate before I met with you.
I told him I represent you, not the family generally, and that any communication should go through me.” Another pause.
“He didn’t take that well.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Tom would have wanted the family taken care of.”
“Tom did take care of the family,” I said.
“He took care of us.”
“Yes,” Diane said.
“He did.” I could hear her moving — the sound of a chair, papers.
“Claire, I need you to not respond to Daniel’s message.
Not yet.
Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Good.
I’d like to come to you, if that’s alright.
There are documents I want to show you in person.
Some of what Daniel has done is recoverable.
Some of it will require him to make a choice.” She paused.
“I want you to be in the room when he makes it.”
The eggs were getting cold downstairs.
Louise was probably eating alone, watching her tablet, giving me time she shouldn’t have to give at eight years old.
“When can you come?” I said.
“Tomorrow morning,” Diane said.
“If that works.”
“It works.”
“Get some rest tonight,” she said.
“Tomorrow will be a long day.”
I hung up and sat for a moment in the quiet room.
Then I went downstairs to eat eggs with my daughter and my mother, and I didn’t say anything about the letter or Daniel or tomorrow, because some things could wait one more morning.
But Daniel’s message sat in my phone like a stone.
*I want to make sure you’re protected.*
Diane arrived at nine in the morning with a leather folder and no small talk.
My mother took the children to the park.
The house went quiet.
We sat at the kitchen table — the same table where I’d held the unopened envelope two nights ago — and Diane laid out the documents one by one.
The joint account had been opened in 2009, before Tom and I met.
It had been a shared account between Tom and Daniel for a family property that was eventually sold.
The account should have been closed.
It wasn’t.
Over twenty-six months, Daniel had made forty-one withdrawals.
Small enough not to trigger automatic alerts.
Consistent enough to be a pattern.
The total was $34,000.
“He was careful,” Diane said.
“Not careful enough, but careful.”
“Did Tom know the whole time?”
“He found out fourteen months ago.
He confronted Daniel once, privately.
Daniel said he’d pay it back.
He made two deposits, then stopped.” She turned a page.
“Tom didn’t push further.
I think he was already sick by then and didn’t have the energy for a fight he wasn’t sure he’d live to finish.”
I looked at the withdrawal records.
Forty-one neat rows.
Dates, amounts, a reference code that meant nothing.
“What are my options?” I said.
“You can pursue repayment privately, through me.
You can report it to the bank and let them initiate a fraud review, which would likely involve law enforcement.
Or you can confront Daniel directly and give him the opportunity to make it right before any of that happens.” She looked at me.
