Chapter 4 - WHAT ANNA REMEMBERED
Charles waited until the nurse finished checking Anna’s monitors.
Then he pulled a chair close.
“Why would Vivian take Lucy?”
Anna closed her eyes.
“I don’t know what she’ll do when she’s scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“The truth.”
He wanted to ask everything at once.
Why had she left?
Why had she never come home?
Why had she believed he would turn away a child?
But Anna’s breathing was shallow, and eighteen years of questions did not give him the right to exhaust her.
“Rest,” he said.
She shook her head.
“You need to hear one thing.”
He leaned closer.
“I didn’t take that money.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Eighteen years earlier, sixty thousand dollars had vanished from the Evelyn Whitmore Scholarship Fund. The transfer records carried Anna’s name.
Vivian had brought him the paperwork.
Anna had said it was a mistake.
Charles had been grieving his wife, furious over the missing money, and convinced his youngest daughter was lying.
He remembered the last fight with sickening clarity.
Bring it back, or don’t come back.
“I remember,” he said.
“No. You remember what they told you.”
“They?”
Anna’s eyelids fluttered.
“Ask Frank about the second account.”
A monitor beeped. The nurse returned and gently ended the visit.
Outside, Lucy stood from her chair.
“Did she talk?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her I didn’t lose the picture?”
“I did.”
That wasn’t true, and he corrected himself immediately.
“No. I’m sorry. I forgot. I’ll tell her next time.”
Lucy considered him.
“Mom says it’s easier if you fix a lie while it’s still small.”
Charles felt something inside him give way.
His lawyer, Elaine Brooks, arrived shortly after midnight.
He had called her from the hallway.
“I need you to review the scholarship fund records from eighteen years ago.”
Elaine studied his face.
“That’s a very specific midnight request.”
“I may have made a mistake.”
“How large?”
He looked through the waiting-room window at Lucy, asleep against Rosa’s shoulder.
“My daughter’s entire adult life.”
Elaine took out a notebook.
Charles called Frank Mercer, the family’s former accountant.
It rang six times.
Then a tired man answered.
“Charles?”
“Anna is here.”
Silence.
“She says there was a second account.”
On the other end, Charles heard a chair scrape.
“Who else knows you’re asking?”
“Why?”
Frank’s breathing changed.
May you like
“Because your daughter wasn’t the one who stole from your wife’s fund.”
Then the call disconnected.
