There was no doctor’s letter inside. Ethan said it was at home. Asked for the doctor’s name, he complained that everyone was interrogating him.
Miriam opened her notebook.
“Clara, did you grant him authority to act for you?”
“No.”
“Did you agree to sell?”
“No.”
Ethan pushed back his chair.
“If this goes outside this room, I lose everything.”
The words settled over the table.
Clara heard, beneath them, the small boy who used to call her when thunder woke him. She could still picture his bare feet on the landing.
“How much?” she asked.
He rubbed his mouth.
“The deposit was eighty thousand.”
“Where is it?”
“Gone.”
Vanessa made a small sound, almost a cough.
Ethan told them about the business loans then, the guarantees, the money moved from the sale of his own house. He had accepted the cottage buyer’s deposit into his company account after sending documents claiming he could sell on Clara’s behalf. He had thought another contract would come through. He had thought he could replace it.
“And if I hadn’t signed?” Clara asked.
“You have plenty tied up here.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
His eyes hardened.
“You would have come around.”
Miriam closed her notebook.
“Clara, we need to preserve these documents and report the suspected forgery. The buyer’s solicitor must be notified immediately.”
Ethan turned to his mother.
“You’d do that to Noah? To Maisie?”
Clara’s gaze drifted to the garden. Lily was crouched beside Maisie, showing her how to pour water without flooding the seedlings.
She had a choice. She could call it confusion, allow another explanation, spend the rest of her life guarding the door against the next emergency.
Or she could let her son face what he had done.
“Make the calls,” she said.
Ethan struck the table with his open hand.
“You owe me!”
The mugs jumped. Vanessa rose, but he was looking only at Clara.
“Daniel got everything. Even dead, he gets everything.”
Lily stood in the kitchen doorway.
No one had heard her return.
“What did my father get?” she asked.
Ethan looked away.
Lily stepped inside, holding the empty watering can.
“You told me there wasn’t anything left. You said the funeral and the debts took it.”
