Chapter 6 - THE PEOPLE WHO CALLED SILENCE PROTECTION
Thomas Hale had arrived at Susan’s house with a casserole.
Emma remembered it.
Chicken, rice, mushroom soup.
The kind of food people brought after funerals because grief still required dinner.
She had been upstairs trying to find her father’s military discharge papers for the funeral home.
She remembered Thomas leaving before she came down.
Susan now told her what happened during those fourteen minutes.
“He said Daniel had created a serious accounting problem.”
“What kind?”
“He wouldn’t explain.”
“Did he accuse Dad of stealing?”
“Not directly.”
Maya leaned forward.
“What words did he use?”
Susan thought.
“He said Daniel had ‘moved money where it didn’t belong.’ He said Grant was trying to clean it up quietly.”
Emma felt heat return to her cheek.
Grant had been twenty feet away from her during most of that week, making coffee, answering the door, driving her to the funeral home.
At the same time, apparently, he had been “cleaning up” her father’s financial mess.
Or something he wanted the Brooks family to believe was her father’s mess.
“Why didn’t Thomas tell me?” Emma asked.
Susan’s answer was immediate.
“Because I asked him not to.”
Emma stared at her.
Susan began crying again.
“I couldn’t lose Daniel twice.”
“What does that mean?”
“I had just spent two years watching him become someone I didn’t recognize. He stopped sleeping. He lied about bills. He snapped at me. Then he had the stroke.”
Susan wiped her face.
“If people thought he was a thief…”
“You decided I shouldn’t know.”
“I decided you had already lost enough.”
Emma stood.
“That wasn’t your decision.”
Susan flinched.
“No.”
For once, she didn’t defend herself.
That almost hurt more.
Emma left the venue with Maya shortly before sunset.
She did not go home.
Grant had texted fourteen times.
The messages moved predictably from apology to irritation.
I lost control.
We both did things today.
Please don’t involve our parents.
You’re letting Maya turn this into something it isn’t.
Then:
Ask your mother what I did for her.
Emma checked into a small hotel near Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall using her own credit card.
Maya stayed long enough to help her document the bruising on her arm and cheek.
“You should also see a doctor if anything hurts more tonight,” Maya said.
Emma nodded.
“Are you going to tell me to call the police?”
“I’m going to tell you that you can. I’m also going to tell you that tonight you don’t have to solve your whole life.”
Emma stared at the carpet.
“I picked him.”
“Yes.”
“I defended him.”
“Yes.”
“When people said he controlled everything, I said he was organized.”
Maya waited.
Emma gave a bitter laugh.
“You’re supposed to tell me I couldn’t have known.”
“I don’t know what you could have known.”
That honesty made Emma look up.
Maya continued.
“But I know you know more now.”
Emma’s phone buzzed.
Not Grant.
Her younger brother, Owen.
Emma nearly ignored it.
Owen lived in Raleigh and had missed the wedding because his daughter had the flu. He and Daniel had barely spoken during Daniel’s final year.
Emma answered.
“Mom called me,” Owen said.
“What did she tell you?”
“Enough to make me ask whether Grant showed you the consulting invoices.”
Emma sat upright.
“You knew about those?”
Owen exhaled.
“I knew Dad said someone was using his name.”
Emma stopped breathing for a second.
“When?”
“About two months before his stroke.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Dad made me promise not to.”
Emma closed her eyes.
Another person who had protected her with silence.
“What exactly did he say?”
Owen’s voice lowered.
“He said, ‘If anything happens to me, don’t believe the first version Grant gives you.’”
May you like
The relationship Emma had trusted most had collapsed that morning.
By nightfall, the family she thought she understood was collapsing with it.
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