Chapter 4 - The Funeral Before the Funeral

At dawn, Rosalind sat wrapped in a motel comforter while Tobias watched local news on a muted television. A reporter stood near the broken highway barrier, rain shining on her hood.

“Two people are presumed dead after a tragic accident,” the caption read. Garrett's photograph appeared beside Rosalind's. He looked devastated. He had always known exactly what face to make for a camera.

“Turn it off,” Rosalind said.

Tobias did. He placed a coffee beside her, then remained standing, as if afraid she'd order him to sit in the wheelchair again.

“Start with your legs.”

He sat across from her. “My crash wasn't an accident. The brake lines were cut. I lost movement for eleven months. Physical therapy got me walking again. Then I found a note in the rehabilitation center: If you stand, your sister falls.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because you were fourteen. Our father had just died. Somebody kept breaking into the house. I thought if the world believed I couldn't walk, whoever attacked me would stop looking.”

“And you stayed in that chair?”

“I kept looking back.”

Rosalind rubbed her raw wrists. “Who threatened you?”

“That's what I've spent fifteen years proving.”

He showed her a photograph of a legal document bearing their late mother's signature. The Laurel River Trust owned shoreline property, a shipping terminal, and enough stock to make several people wealthy. Rosalind had never heard of it.

“Mom left it to us?”

“To you, after your thirty-third birthday. Unless you die first. Then control transfers to your surviving spouse through a clause Garrett persuaded the trustees to add when you married.”

“He persuaded them?”

“With help from a forged power of attorney.”

Rosalind stared at her wedding ring. “He didn't marry me. He bought a countdown.”

Tobias slid the silver key across the table. “Storage locker nine at the old ferry station. Mom hid the original papers there.”

Outside, a car slowed in the motel lot. Its dark windows reflected the weak morning sky.

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On the TV, now silent, Garrett stood at a microphone and wept.

Then the car in the parking lot stopped outside their door.