Chapter 18 - An Apology with Conditions

My father was questioned and released while the financial inquiry continued. Sloane sent me eleven messages claiming I'd engineered the timing to embarrass him. I didn't respond. My attorney retained the messages and advised me to limit contact.

Four days later Mom appeared at Nia's house, where I was staying while I recovered. She wore the gray cardigan I'd given her for her birthday two years earlier and carried a casserole dish. Her first words were, "I don't want us to be strangers."

I asked Nia to stay in the kitchen. Mom noticed and looked wounded.

"You don't trust your own mother?"

"You signed my name to a lie."

"I thought your father would return the money."

"And the fall?"

Mom set the casserole down. "I didn't know Sloane was going to shove you. I told her not to do anything stupid."

"You knew she wanted to get me out of the way. Then you told everyone I was drunk."

Her chin trembled. "I was trying to save the wedding."

"You were trying to save appearances."

For the first time she admitted she had taken my emergency folder from the desk and given the codes to Dad. She'd told Frances I approved the charges. She'd written the false accident statement because she thought I might be too angry to cooperate. She called each decision a small mistake, as if small mistakes could not stack into a staircase high enough to break someone.

Then she asked me to call the investigators and say she hadn't intended any harm.

"I'll tell them exactly what you said," I replied. "But I won't change it to make you comfortable."

She began to cry. I wanted to comfort her; that instinct was so old it felt like gravity. Instead I slid the untouched casserole back across the table.

"You can care about me without asking me to lie for you," I said. "That's the kind of relationship I'd consider."

She left without taking the casserole. Afterward Nia put it in the refrigerator. Neither of us ate it.

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That night Price called with an update: investigators had recovered an additional document from Frances's files, a private side agreement signed months before the rehearsal.

The agreement promised Sloane a share of every dollar the estate received through the emergency-lodging account.