Chapter 5 - The Last Letter Wasn’t a Love Letter
Anna’s estate attorney contacted Rebecca the following week.
There were documents to review and a sealed memorandum Anna had left concerning the housing fund.
My name appeared because she had intended to invite me onto an advisory committee after the babies were born.
I had never accepted.
I had never signed anything.
Somebody had used the assumption that a wife’s name could be borrowed as easily as her husband’s pen.
The independent review began connecting records.
Payments to a consulting business.
Invoices that described work nobody could clearly identify.
Approvals routed through people accustomed to obeying urgent instructions.
Sophia had handled administrative coordination.
Lorenzo Valli, Carter—no, Moretti Holdings’ finance director, had approved several transfers.
I caught myself making that tiny mistake while speaking to Rebecca, calling the company by a name from an old vendor folder. Grief had begun to blur ordinary details.
She waited while I corrected myself.
Nobody used the slip to question whether I knew my own life.
That mattered.
Anna’s memorandum was precise.
Dates.
Questions.
Copies of correspondence she had received in her role with the fund.
She had not accused anyone of murder or predicted her own death.
She had done something more ordinary and, in that family, more dangerous.
She had asked for an accounting.
One note at the bottom broke my heart.
Vincent says Lorenzo has handled this for years. I would still like someone to explain the figures.
Even Anna had been told not to worry.
Rebecca arranged for me to provide a statement about the authorization.
Afterward, I sat on the bed feeling as though my former life had grown hands long enough to reach me anywhere.
Mom found me there.
“Tea?”
“I think I’m made of tea now.”
“Then soup.”
I smiled weakly.
She sat beside me.
“You don’t have to solve the foundation.”
“I know.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I keep thinking if Anna had been listened to—”
Mom took my hand.
“Her heart condition was real. Her doctors knew that. Don’t turn this into another way to make yourself responsible.”
I nodded.
There were questions the records could answer.
There were losses no investigation could reverse.
I needed to stop confusing the two.
That afternoon, a message arrived from an unfamiliar address.
Withdraw the accusations. You have taken enough from this family.
It included a photograph of the lane outside Teresa’s property.
Not a picture from inside the garden.
Not proof of immediate danger.
Enough.
My hands went numb.
I showed Mom.
She did not tell me it was probably nothing.
She called the local authorities while I contacted Rebecca.
We followed the advice we were given.
Temporary changes.
Documented concerns.
People informed who needed to know.
I hated packing a bag again.
I hated the sound of my mother checking the lock.
I hated that carrying children had not made the world gentler.
Vincent learned about the message through counsel.
For the first time since I had known him, his response did not arrive as an order.
He asked what would help without interfering with the local response.
I authorized Rebecca to tell him that cooperation with investigators mattered more than sending his own men.
He agreed.
I expected an argument.
There wasn’t one.
Later, Ethan told Rebecca that Vincent had wanted to board a plane.
Instead, he had turned over relevant company records and identified people who might possess information.
An arrival could make him feel powerful.
Evidence could make us safer.
For once, he chose the second.
Two days later, my phone rang while Mom and I sat in a temporary rental arranged nearby.
It was Gabriel.
Teresa had asked him to check that I had everything I needed.
“I brought the sketchbooks you left on the kitchen shelf,” he said. “Would you like them dropped with Teresa, or somewhere else?”
My sketchbooks.
I had almost forgotten.
Before my marriage, I had illustrated children’s books.
Anna used to say I could make a fox look as though it had opinions.
I looked down at my hands.
“Leave them with Teresa, please.”
“Of course.”
No questions.
No request for the story.
May you like
That evening, I opened a blank page and drew two sleeping rabbits beneath a lemon tree.
For twenty minutes, nobody in Chicago existed.
