The envelope was tucked inside a bag of oats. Its edge was creased, and Emily had drawn a small blue star on one corner so she could tell it from the other papers.
“You can read it,” she said.
“I will.”
“Now?”
Her face was blotched from crying. She kept looking at the front door, where the officers had taken Grant away. She wanted to know what had happened in our house. I did, too.
We sat at the kitchen table. I pulled out the contents carefully: statements for an account in Emily’s name, several documents bearing what appeared to be my signature, and a letter from a solicitor dated six weeks before Clara’s death. The letter asked Clara to confirm instructions concerning a house by the sea and money she intended to place in trust for Emily.
I had never seen the letter. I had been told the house was sold to cover medical bills. Clara’s bills had frightened me enough that I never asked to see the sale papers.
I turned over the last page. Grant’s name appeared on the line for the person authorized to assist with the transfer. Beneath it was a signature that looked like mine until I reached the final letter. Whoever had made it had drawn the tail the way I used to, years before an injury changed the way I held a pen.
The room seemed to tip. I put the page flat on the table.
Emily watched me. “Did Uncle Grant do something bad?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is it because I took the envelope?”
“No. He made choices long before you found it.”
She nodded, but her eyes stayed on the blue star. At last she said, “I hid behind the door when he hurt Lena. I thought if I screamed, you might hear me. Then I heard your key.”
I had imagined her alone and calling for me. She had been trying to warn me before I walked into the house.
“You did warn me,” I said.
“But I told you not to come in.”
“You were protecting me.”
Her mouth tightened. “I was scared.”
“So was I.”
She leaned against me then, suddenly heavy with exhaustion. I held her while the sunlight moved slowly across the table. The chocolates waited in the hall. Neither of us remembered them until that evening.
Mrs. Alvarez stayed while I called Clara’s solicitor. The woman on the telephone had retired the previous year, but she remembered Clara. She asked me to bring the papers in the morning and to make no arrangements with Grant or anyone speaking for him. When I told her about Lena, her voice grew quiet.
“She tried to reach me,” she said. “Your wife, near the end. I thought the letter had settled it.”
I wanted to ask what else Clara had said. Emily was asleep against my shoulder, still in her cardigan, and I could not bear another answer that night.
Mrs. Alvarez found the chocolates on the hall table when she went for her coat. The little box was crushed on one side. She straightened its ribbon with her thumb and handed it to me without a word.
Emily woke when I carried her upstairs. She noticed the box in my hand.
“Are they broken?”
“A few, probably.”
“That’s okay.”
I placed them beside her bed. She reached out and touched the dented lid, then let me turn off the lamp.
Sleep did not come easily for either of us. Near midnight I heard her moving, and when I went in, she was sitting up with the box open on her knees. She had eaten half a chocolate. The other half rested on its paper cup.
“I didn’t want you to eat dinner alone,” she said.
I sat beside her and finished it. The caramel had leaked onto the paper and tasted faintly of cardboard. Emily lay down while I was still chewing, her hand closed around my sleeve.
At the solicitor’s office the next morning, I learned how much Grant had taken. He had sold the seaside house to a company he controlled, far below its value, then sold it again at full price. Money Clara had set aside for Emily had been moved through accounts opened with signatures I had never made. Some transfers were years old. The most recent was only three weeks old.
The solicitor, Ms. Bell, laid the documents in rows across her desk. Her office faced a busy crossing. Each time the pedestrian signal changed, a soft electronic sound drifted through the window, and I found myself waiting for it rather than looking at the figures.
“Will Emily lose the money?” I asked.
“We’ll work to recover it. The accounts can be traced.” Ms. Bell paused. “I’m sorry I didn’t make certain the letter reached you directly.”
She showed me a copy of the receipt. Grant had signed for it at our door while Clara was in the hospital. He had then brought me a folder of papers to sign, telling me they were needed to pay the bills. I remembered the kitchen table, the cup of cold tea, Emily asleep upstairs. I could not remember reading a single page.
Ms. Bell seemed to see where I had gone. “You were caring for your wife,” she said.
“I signed them.”
