Deborah closed her eyes.
“You brought them.”
“I did.”
“Good.”
She seemed relieved.
Then she looked at me one last time.
“There is something you should know before they come in.”
“What?”
“Thomas isn’t dying.”
I froze.
“What?”
My mother smiled.
And the final piece fell into place.
“He told me he was.”
“Why?”
“To see what I would do.”
I stared.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“He baited you?”
“He suspected Preston had been digging through his estate.
He told me a false value.
Eighteen million.”
“How much is it really?”
My mother laughed softly.
“Almost nothing.”
I could not understand.
“He donated nearly all of it years ago.”
“Then why—”
“Because Thomas wanted to know whether I would choose you.”
The sirens grew louder.
“He created a fake inheritance?”
“He created documents convincing enough to fool Preston.”
“And you?”
“I believed them.”
My mother’s smile vanished.
“Thomas knew me better after thirty-seven years apart than you did after thirty-seven years beside me.”
The front door burst open.
Police flooded the room.
My mother raised her hands.
And as they cuffed her, she looked at me.
“I failed his test.”
Then she whispered:
“But you survived mine.”
10. THOMAS ROWE
Two weeks later, I met my father.
My biological father.
He came to the state prosecutor’s office without lawyers.
No entourage.
No fortune.
He was seventy-one.
Thin.
Silver-haired.
Healthy enough to look embarrassed by the rumor of his imminent death.
When I entered the room, he stood.
Neither of us knew what to say.
Finally, he whispered, “You have Evelyn’s eyes.”
I almost left.
I had heard enough about family resemblance to last a lifetime.
Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For waiting.”
That stopped me.
He did not ask me to forgive him.
He did not tell me Deborah had kept us apart as though that erased his responsibility.
He simply sat down and answered everything.
Yes, he had known about me.
Yes, he had stayed away.
Yes, he had regretted it.
Yes, he had reached out the previous year.
And yes—
He had lied about the inheritance.
“Why?”
He looked ashamed.
“I knew Preston had hired people to investigate my finances.”
“So you set a trap.”
“For him.”
“You told my mother too.”
“Yes.”
“You knew what she might do.”
“No.”
That answer mattered.
“If I had imagined she was capable of this, I would have gone directly to you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Fear.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“Cowardice is often less dramatic than cruelty, Renee.
It still destroys people.”
I believed that too.
“What did you expect?”
“I expected Preston to reveal his greed.
I thought Deborah might finally admit the truth about me.”
