Chapter 19 - The Last Conversation
Lauren sat in a small interview room at the county building, still wearing her wedding dress.
The lace was dirty at the hem.
Her curls had fallen flat.
For a second, I saw the woman I thought I knew.
Then I remembered my mother on the grass.
I sat across from her.
“You have five minutes.”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what part?”
She looked down.
“All of it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry about the money. I’m sorry about your mother.”
“You changed her medication.”
“I changed the dosage because I thought if she seemed confused, you’d stop listening to her.”
The honesty was worse than denial.
“You could have killed her.”
“I didn’t think—”
“No. You did think. That’s the problem.”
She started crying.
I stayed quiet.
After a minute, she said, “I did love you.”
“Maybe.”
“I did.”
“You loved what I could solve for you.”
She looked at me then.
There was nothing left to argue.
“Victor kept threatening my mother,” she said. “He said he would destroy her business and put her in jail.”
“So you decided to destroy my family first.”
“I thought once we were married, I could fix everything.”
“With stolen money?”
“With control.”
That word hung between us.
Control.
That had been the real love of her life.
Not me.
Not even money.
Control.
I stood.
“Daniel.”
I stopped at the door.
“What happens now?” she asked.
I looked back at her.
“You tell the truth. All of it. Then you live with what it costs.”
Her face crumpled.
I opened the door.
She called my name one last time.
I didn’t turn around.
Outside, Dad was waiting in the hallway.
He handed me my phone.
“There’s one more thing,” he said.
I almost laughed.
“What now?”
He showed me an email from the wedding photographer.
A photo had been captured seconds before Mom fell.
Lauren was not looking at Mom.
At the hospital, Mom finally let a nurse cut the thin hospital bracelet from her wrist after the X-rays came back clean. She turned it between her fingers before dropping it into the trash.
"I kept thinking I was getting old," she said. "The dizziness. The missed appointments. The moments when everyone looked at me like they were waiting for me to forget something."
I swallowed hard.
"I’m sorry."
"Stop saying that every five minutes."
"I have a backlog."
She smiled, then grew serious. "Daniel, if this changes you into someone who trusts nobody, then she still takes something from you. Learn. Pay attention. But don’t become hard just to prove you can’t be fooled again."
May you like
That sounded like advice I would spend years understanding.
She was looking directly at Victor Dane in the mansion window.
