Chapter 7: Carla
Three days after the arrest, Carla asked to see me.
I almost said no.
Daniel advised me to bring him along.
I told him I wanted to go alone.
The meeting room at the facility had a table bolted to the floor and two chairs.
Carla was already seated when I came in.
She looked smaller than I remembered.
Her hair was pulled back.
She wasn't wearing any of the jewelry she usually wore.
She looked up when I sat down.
"I didn't hurt her," she said immediately.
"I want you to know that.
I never touched Irene.
That was Mom."
"You were in the room, Carla.
You had the hammer."
"I was breaking into the safe.
That's different."
"Is it."
She looked away.
Her jaw moved like she was working through something.
"Mom told me Irene was stealing from you," she said.
"She showed me documents.
Bank transfers, she said, that Irene had been making without your knowledge.
She said if we didn't act before you got back from London, Irene would have cleaned out the estate accounts and disappeared."
I watched her face.
"Did you believe that?"
A long pause.
"I wanted to," she said quietly.
"It was easier than the other thing."
"What other thing?"
She looked at me then.
Her eyes were red at the edges.
"That Mom had been lying to both of us for years.
That the money she told me was going to be mine — my share of Dad's estate — was already mostly gone.
That she had been spending it and needed more and was using me to get it." She pressed her lips together.
"That I was just another tool."
The room was very quiet.
"When did you figure that out?" I asked.
"When the detective showed me the bank records yesterday." She folded her hands on the table.
"The account she told me held my inheritance.
It's nearly empty, Austin.
She's been drawing it down since Dad died." Her voice was steady but thin.
"She told me it was being managed.
Invested.
She said it would be worth twice as much by the time I was forty."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm thirty-seven," Carla said.
I looked at my sister.
Three years younger than me.
She had always followed Margaret's lead, always deferred, always believed.
I had sometimes resented how easily she accepted everything Mom said.
Now I understood it differently.
She hadn't been agreeing.
She had been depending.
"Carla," I said.
"The DA is filing charges.
I can't stop that and I wouldn't if I could.
What happened to Irene—"
"I know." She cut me off, but not harshly.
"I know.
I'm not asking you to fix it.
I'm not asking you for anything." She looked down at her hands.
"I just needed you to know that I didn't know about the baby.
Mom never told me.
If I had known Irene was pregnant—" She stopped.
"I would have walked out.
Whatever else I am, I wouldn't have done that."
I studied her for a moment.
"The DA's office will want your cooperation," I said.
"Your testimony about what Margaret told you, what she showed you, how she framed it — that matters.
It speaks to the planning and the intent."
Carla nodded slowly.
"My lawyer already told me that."
"Will you do it?"
She looked at the table.
Then at me.
"She's my mother," she said.
"She used you," I said.
"The same way she tried to use Irene.
The same way she used the estate.
The same way she used me every time I sent money home because I thought she needed it." I leaned forward slightly.
"She put you in that room, Carla.
She handed you the hammer.
If Irene had lost the baby last night, you would be facing a charge that would follow you for the rest of your life.
And Margaret would have found a way to make sure the blame landed on you, not her."
Carla's eyes filled.
She didn't let the tears fall.
She blinked them back, hard.
"I know," she said.
Very quietly.
"I know that."
She agreed to cooperate before I left the room.
Walking out, I passed a guard in the corridor.
He nodded.
I nodded back.
In the car, I sat for a moment before starting the engine.
I thought about Carla's face when she said *she's my mother.*
I understood it.
I had felt the same thing standing in that bedroom doorway with my phone recording and the sirens getting louder.
Part of me had still wanted it not to be true.
May you like
That part was gone now.
I started the car and drove back to the hospital.
