Chapter 9 - The Things She Practiced
Celeste had told my father that her first husband died in a boating accident.
She had cried when she said it.
I remembered because he had reached across the table and taken her hand.
Now Bennett was telling us Daniel Mercer was alive.
And a marriage record existed.
Investigators still had to establish whether a divorce had been filed elsewhere.
But nothing they had found so far supported her story.
My father listened without interrupting.
Then he asked for a glass of water.
His hand shook when he lifted it.
“Don’t tell me I’m an idiot,” he said after Bennett left.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I’ve covered that part myself.”
I sat beside the bed.
“What did she tell you about him?”
“That he made her feel safe.”
He stared into the glass.
“I thought we understood each other. Losing someone.”
My mother had been dead for eight years.
Celeste had known exactly where to press.
That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Not the diamonds.
Not the estate.
The way she had studied his grief and used the same words he used.
“She didn’t love you,” I said quietly. “That doesn’t make you hard to love.”
He put the glass down before he dropped it.
For a moment, he looked like the man who had sat on my bedroom floor after my mother’s funeral because neither of us could sleep.
Then Richard arrived with more documents.
My father’s proposed estate changes had not all been completed.
Several required further signatures.
One recent insurance application, however, named Celeste as a beneficiary.
There were also payments from his personal account to a company described as an estate-planning consultant.
The company shared an address with Harbor Renewal’s administrator.
Everything touched something else.
That evening, Paige called.
Martin had demanded the foundation’s paper files.
She had refused.
“He said he’ll come get them himself.”
“Let building security know. Don’t meet him alone.”
“There’s one file he kept asking about.”
“Which one?”
“The original Harbor Renewal due-diligence packet.”
I asked her to read the approval page.
She did.
My father’s name.
Martin’s name.
Then mine.
The packet said I had conducted the site inspection.
May you like
On a day I had been in Chicago.
Standing in a courtroom.
