Chapter 8
My father spoke before she could.
“It would have protected everyone.”
“Everyone except Miles and Edith.”
He slammed his fist against the table.
“You think this boy loves you? His family has been waiting for an opportunity to come after us.”
Miles did not raise his voice.
“I had the records before the wedding. If I wanted revenge, I could have filed without telling Sloane anything.”
My father looked toward the case.
“What do you want?”
The question revealed more than any confession could have.
Not What are you talking about?
Not This is a lie.
What do you want?
Miles looked at me.
I understood that he was giving the choice to me.
I removed the veil from my hair and placed it beside the ledger.
“Tomorrow morning, Miles and I are meeting his attorney.”
My mother stood.
“Sloane, please.”
“You will return everything Arthur owned, including the profits his share should have earned. You will pay Edith what she was denied, or we will take this to court.”
My father’s face hardened.
“You would destroy your own family?”
I looked around the enormous dining room.
For the first time, I saw the polished floors, the paintings, and the crystal lights differently.
They were not proof of success.
They were evidence.
“You did that twenty-two years ago,” I said.
—
The legal process lasted nine months.
My parents refused our first proposal.
Silas Hale denied everything until Miles’s attorney played one of Arthur’s cassette recordings during a private meeting.
After that, the denials stopped.
The settlement required my father and Silas to return Arthur’s original ownership share, along with a percentage of the profits earned since his death.
Edith received enough money to pay every medical bill, replace the small rental she had lived in for two decades, and establish a trust in Arthur’s name for trade-school students.
She did not celebrate when she signed the documents.
She sat silently for a long time, holding Arthur’s last letter.
Then she looked at Miles.
“Your father always said the truth moved slowly,” she whispered. “But he believed it would arrive.”
My mother asked to see me once before the settlement became final.
We met at the same diner where Miles had shown me the brass key.
She looked smaller without her pearls and carefully styled hair.
“I should have told you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I kept thinking your father would fix it.”
“He had twenty-two years.”
“I was afraid of losing everything.”
“You were willing to let Edith lose everything instead.”
My mother looked down at the table.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“I don’t know whether I will.”
She nodded as though she had expected that answer.
Before leaving, she placed a small glass jar beside my hand.
It was filled with lemon candies.
“I found it in your old bedroom,” she said.
The faded label was still attached.
FOR EVERY BAD DAY WE HAVEN’T HAD YET.
My throat tightened.
“You always loved him,” she said. “I think that frightened us more than anything. We knew that if you ever had to choose between the life we gave you and the truth he carried, you would choose him.”
May you like
“You were right.”
She left without asking me to come home.
