Chapter 4: The Fireproof Box
Dora arrived in fifty-three minutes.
I know because I counted them from a plastic chair outside Sophie's room, watching the door and watching the corridor and watching Nathan, who had come back from his coffee run and was now sitting across from me, scrolling his phone with his thumb moving too fast for him to be reading anything.
Dora was seventy-one, small, and had buried a husband and raised four children and was not afraid of a single thing left on this earth.
She walked in carrying a metal box under one arm and took the chair beside me without a word of greeting, which was exactly right.
Nathan looked up.
"Mrs.
Simms."
"Nathan." She didn't smile.
She set the box on my lap.
It was heavier than I remembered.
"Do you want to do this here?" she asked me quietly.
"Not yet." I put my hand on the lid.
"Soon."
A detective arrived twenty minutes later.
**Detective Carol Marsh** — mid-forties, dark coat, a notepad she didn't open immediately.
She introduced herself to the room and asked if she could speak with me privately.
Nathan stood up.
"I'd like to be present for my mother."
Detective Marsh looked at him the way Dr.
Hale had looked at me — measuring, careful.
"Mr.
Ellis," she said, "I'll need to speak with you separately as well.
We'll get to that.
Right now I'd like to start with Mrs.
Ellis."
Something moved across Nathan's face.
"She's sixty-nine years old and she's just had a shock.
She needs family support."
"Nathan." My voice came out flat and quiet, the way it used to when he was small and had gone too far.
"Sit down."
He sat.
Dora and I followed Detective Marsh to the same consultation room Dr.
Hale had used.
Dora sat beside me.
I had stopped pretending I didn't need her there.
Detective Marsh asked me to walk through everything from the moment the chocolates arrived.
I did.
She wrote nothing down until I mentioned the card.
"You still have it?" she asked.
"It's in my car.
On the passenger seat."
"Don't touch it again.
We'll retrieve it." She made a note.
"Mrs.
Ellis, do you have any reason to believe your son had a motive to harm you?"
I opened the fireproof box.
Inside: Robert's will, a life insurance policy, the deed to the house, and a sealed envelope I had never seen before.
My name was written on the front in Robert's handwriting.
I set the envelope on the table.
"My husband passed fourteen months ago," I said.
"He left the house and his estate to me.
Nathan has been asking me to sign a revised deed for the past eight months.
He says it's for tax purposes." I looked at the envelope.
"I never signed it.
I didn't understand why he needed it so urgently."
Detective Marsh's pen stopped moving.
"Has he asked recently?"
"Three weeks ago.
He came to the house with a document and a pen and sat at my kitchen table for two hours." I paused.
"I told him I wanted my own lawyer to look at it first.
He left angry."
She looked at the sealed envelope.
"Do you know what's in that?"
"No.
Robert told me to open it if I was ever in serious trouble and couldn't trust the people around me." I pressed my fingers flat against the table.
"I think this qualifies."
I opened it.
Inside was a single folded page in Robert's handwriting, dated eleven months before he d*ed.
*Margaret — if you're reading this, something has gone wrong that I hoped would never happen.
I need to tell you what I found out about Nathan two years before my diagnosis.
I didn't tell you then because I thought I could handle it.
I was wrong to keep it from you.
I'm sorry.*
*He borrowed money from a private lender — $340,000 — using our house as collateral.
He forged my signature on the loan documents.
I found out when the lender contacted me directly.
I paid it off quietly to protect you and the children.
I made Nathan sign an agreement acknowledging the debt to me personally.*
*That agreement is with my attorney, Gerald Foss, at Foss and Crane in Albany.
He has instructions to release it to you upon request.
Nathan knows it exists.
He knows that if it becomes public, he loses everything — his professional license, his reputation, and any claim to the estate.*
*I believe he will try to pressure you after I'm gone.
I believe he may try to do worse.
I hope I'm wrong.*
*I love you.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner.*
*Robert*
The room was very quiet.
Dora's hand covered mine on the table.
Detective Marsh had stopped writing entirely.
She was reading the letter from where she sat, not pretending otherwise.
"Mrs.
May you like
Ellis," she said.
"I need to make a call."
