Chapter 5: The Woman Who Drove Him
The dining room went so quiet that I could hear Lily in the next room, the small sound of her fork against the plate.
Margaret stood up.
"That's not possible," she said.
"I drove him on a Wednesday," Sandra said.
"You were at your garden club.
He called me that morning and asked if I could take him somewhere without telling you.
I said yes." She paused.
"He was your husband for forty-one years, Margaret.
He was kind to me when David and I were first married and you weren't.
I owed him that much."
"You went behind my back."
"He asked me to."
"You are my daughter-in-law."
"I was his friend," Sandra said.
"And he was scared.
Not of dying.
He told me he wasn't scared of that.
He was scared of what would happen to Lily after he was gone." She looked at me.
"He talked about her the whole drive.
He said she had his mother's eyes.
He said he wished he'd stood up sooner."
Margaret's hand came down flat on the table.
"You had no right —"
"He had every right," Sandra said.
"It was his house.
His name was on the deed.
Whatever you told David to sign, whatever you filed with the court, it was still his house and he knew it."
"Sandra." David's voice was a warning.
"No." She turned to him.
"I've been quiet for three years, David.
I watched your mother treat Claire like she was temporary.
I watched her tell Lily at Christmas that Santa didn't visit children who weren't really part of the family.
I watched her tonight kick a six-year-old child out of a chair at Thanksgiving dinner and I sat there and I said nothing because I didn't know how to say it without losing everything." Her voice broke slightly, then steadied.
"But Gerald knew.
And he did something about it.
And I'm not going to pretend I don't know what I know."
David looked at his wife for a long moment.
Something shifted in his face.
Not quickly.
It moved the way ice moves in early spring — slowly, with a sound underneath it you can feel before you can hear.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he said.
"Because you would have told her," Sandra said simply.
He didn't argue with that.
Margaret turned to me.
Her composure was still there, but it was thinner now.
I could see the edges of it.
"You brought her into this," she said.
"You got to Sandra somehow, you planned all of —"
"I didn't know Sandra drove him," I said.
"I found out about the letter the same way you did.
Thirty minutes ago.
On speaker phone.
In front of your whole family."
"Then how did you know to contest the estate?"
"Because Gerald called me," I said.
"Six weeks before he passed.
He asked me to bring Lily to visit.
We sat in the garden for two hours.
He told me he was sorry for the way things had gone.
He told me Lily would be taken care of.
He told me that if anyone ever tried to take the house, I should call Mr.
Harlow." I let that sit for a moment.
"He gave me the number himself."
Margaret sat back down.
It wasn't a graceful movement.
It was the movement of someone whose legs have stopped cooperating.
"He called you," she said.
Not accusing.
Just saying it.
Like she was trying to understand the shape of something she couldn't quite see.
"He loved her," I said.
"Whatever happened between David and me, whatever you thought of me, he loved Lily.
And he knew you wouldn't protect her."
The candles on the sideboard had burned low.
Margaret looked at them for a long moment.
Then she looked at David.
"Did you know he called her?" she said.
David picked up his wine glass.
He took one slow sip.
Set it down.
May you like
"No," he said.
But the way he said it — the way his eyes moved just slightly to the left before he answered — told me that was not entirely true.
