Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN WHO STAYED
Judith contacted Ruth the next morning.
She would meet Cameron at a diner near his hotel.
She wanted her own lawyer present.
Cameron arrived at seven.
He would not miss eight o’clock with his daughter.
Judith sat in a corner booth, looking smaller than he remembered.
“You knew,” he said.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Since the hospital.”
He sat across from her.
For sixteen years, this woman had bought his groceries.
Managed his staff.
Placed fresh flowers beside Lily’s photograph on her birthday.
“You watched me grieve.”
Judith stared at her coffee.
“Graham told me Caroline had been trying to take Lily away from you.”
“That’s why you did it?”
“He said you were unstable.
He said Lily would be better off somewhere quiet.”
“And you believed him.”
“At first.”
Cameron’s hands went still.
“At first?”
“When I visited her two years later, she asked why you never came.”
“What did you tell her?”
Judith began to cry.
He waited.
“I told her you were busy.”
Cameron stood so abruptly her lawyer looked up.
Ruth touched his wrist.
He sat again.
Judith wiped her face.
“Graham paid the school.
He paid me.
After a while, telling the truth meant admitting what I’d already done.”
“Where are the records?”
“I kept copies.
I wanted protection.”
She gave Ruth a storage key and a handwritten inventory.
Payments.
Photographs.
Letters from the school.
A recording of Graham discussing Lily’s placement.
“Why leave the picture on my desk?” Cameron asked.
“Because I couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t know.”
“That note wasn’t an apology.”
“No.”
For the first time, Judith looked directly at him.
“It was what I told myself.”
At seven fifty-five, Cameron arrived at Briar House.
Eva was waiting in the conference room.
She looked at the clock, then at him.
“You came.”
“I said I would.”
He placed a bag of breakfast sandwiches on the table.
“I didn’t know what you like.”
“Eggs.
No cheese.”
“Okay.”
Before he could sit, Marcus called.
The storage unit had been opened the night before.
Judith’s boxes were gone.
But the facility’s security camera had recorded the person who took them.
May you like
It wasn’t Graham.
It was Cameron’s chief financial officer.
