“Dad, is it true? About Emily’s medication? About Grace?”
Richard’s glass trembled once before he set it down.
“Sit,” he said. “Please. All of you.”
Victoria appeared in the doorway to the study, and for the first time since I’d met her, she looked like she was calculating rather than performing.
“There’s nothing to discuss,” she said. “Emily is unwell. I am protecting this family’s assets from a young woman who cannot manage them.”
“She’s not unwell,” I said. “She’s drugged. You’ve been feeding her a sedative disguised as a vitamin, and you filed a competency petition six weeks before you started manufacturing the symptoms to support it.”
“You have no right—”
“I have a career built on proving exactly this kind of thing, Victoria. I’ve traced worse-hidden money than yours.”
Richard made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She did this to my daughter. Grace.” His eyes were wet, and old, and ashamed in a way that had clearly been rehearsed into silence for years. “My father left Grace’s mother’s estate to Grace outright, no trustee. Victoria said it made the family look unstable, having money split up like that. She said it would embarrass us. I let her handle it. I always let her handle it.”
“You let her drive your own daughter out of her life,” Daniel said, and something in his voice cracked open that had never been allowed to crack before.
“She’s my wife,” Richard said, as if that were an answer instead of an excuse.
Emily appeared at the top of the stairs, still in yesterday’s cardigan, but standing straighter than I’d seen her stand all week.
“I’m not signing anything,” she said, her voice carrying clean and clear through the foyer for the first time since I’d met her. “Not the papers. Not the evaluation. Not this family’s silence anymore.”
Victoria turned on her, sharp. “Emily, go to your room.”
“No.” Emily came down the stairs one step at a time, like each one cost her something she’d been saving up for years to spend. “You did this to Grace. I know that now. And you were going to do it to me, and let Daniel sign the paper that made it legal, and call it love the whole time.”
“I was protecting this family.”
