My voice lowered.
“Tell me about the addendum.”
This time, Martin said nothing for so long that I knew he had been expecting that question for years.
“So you found it.”
“I’m holding it.”
“Richard insisted on that condition.”
“Why?”
“You should ask me that in person.”
“I’m asking now.”
A breath.
Then—
“Because David approached Richard for money before Richard died.”
My hand went cold around the phone.
“When?”
“Seven months before his death.”
“What kind of money?”
“Two hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
I sat down hard.
“Why?”
“David told him it was for a business expansion.”
“What business?”
“That’s what Richard asked.”
“And?”
“David became evasive.”
Martin’s voice sharpened.
“Richard hired an investigator.”
I stared at the glass doors.
Outside, New York kept moving.
People crossed the sidewalk.
A bus hissed at the curb.
A woman laughed into her phone.
My world had split open, and nobody on the street knew.
“What did the investigator find?”
“Gambling debt.”
I shut my eyes.
“Sports?”
“Sports. Online casinos. Private games. And money borrowed from people who do not file polite collection notices.”
My mouth dried.
“How much?”
“At the time? Nearly four hundred thousand.”
I thought of David on my sidewalk.
His crossed arms.
His little smile.
Daniela saying, It was urgent.
It had been urgent all right.
“What did Richard do?”
“He refused to give him money.”
“And Daniela?”
“She called Richard cruel.”
Of course she did.
“She said David made mistakes but deserved a chance.”
Of course she did.
“Then Richard discovered Daniela had already withdrawn thirty-five thousand dollars from an education account he had created for any future grandchildren.”
My eyes opened.
“What grandchildren?”
“Exactly.”
The account had existed for children Daniela and David never had.
Richard had funded it quietly.
Daniela had found it anyway.
“He confronted her?”
“Yes.”
“And she admitted it?”
“She said marriage meant sharing burdens.”
That sentence sounded so much like Daniela that my chest hurt.
Martin continued.
“Richard came into my office the next week and amended the trust.”
The page trembled in my hand.
“He knew she might come after the house.”
“He was afraid David would pressure her.”
“No.”
I looked at my husband’s signature.
“No, Martin. Don’t clean it up for me. Richard knew our daughter might choose David over us.”
Martin did not answer.
That was answer enough.
I spent that night at a small hotel near the courthouse.
Not because I had nowhere else to go.
Susan had friends in Manhattan.
Mrs. Nolan would have taken me in.
Martin offered his guest room.
But I needed walls that had never heard Daniela call me Mom.
I needed a room with no memories.
At 11:42 p.m., someone knocked.
Three slow knocks.
I froze.
Then my phone lit up.
Daniela.
Another knock.
“Mom.”
Her voice came through the door.
I had not told her where I was.
