Chapter 5: What Eleanor Had Been Hiding
She was on the phone for eleven minutes.
I know because I watched the clock on the mantle without meaning to.
My father stood at the window.
My mother had not moved from the armchair.
Nobody spoke.
When Eleanor came back into the living room, her face was the color of old paper.
She looked at my father first.
Not my mother.
My father.
"That was Marcus," she said.
My father's shoulders dropped half an inch.
A small movement.
I filed it away.
"Who is Marcus?" I asked.
Eleanor didn't answer me.
She was still looking at my father.
"He says the Gazette called him for a follow-up piece," she said.
"They've been talking to people.
Neighbors.
People from the church.
Julian's colleagues." She stopped.
"And someone from the insurance company."
My mother's head came up sharply.
"What?"
"The insurance company," Eleanor repeated.
I looked between the three of them.
Something was moving beneath the surface of this conversation that I could not yet see clearly.
"What does the insurance company have to do with anything?" I said.
Nobody answered me.
"What does Julian's insurance have to do with a newspaper follow-up?" I said again, slower this time.
My father turned from the window.
"Sienna, there are things about Julian's estate that were handled during a very difficult period.
Decisions were made that—"
"What decisions?"
"You were not in a position to manage things yourself," my mother said carefully.
"You were grieving.
You were barely functional.
Someone had to—"
"What decisions," I said, "were made about Julian's estate."
The room had gone very still.
Eleanor sat back down on the sofa.
She put her phone face-down on her knee and pressed her palm flat against it, as though she could hold whatever was inside it from getting out.
"Dad was listed as a secondary contact on Julian's life insurance policy," she said.
"From before you were married.
Julian never updated it."
I stared at her.
"When Julian passed," my father said, his voice measured and careful, "the policy required a contact to initiate the claim process.
You were unreachable in those first weeks.
We were trying to help."
"You initiated a claim on my husband's life insurance policy," I said, "without telling me."
"We were trying to help," my mother repeated.
"Where is the money?"
Silence.
"Where is the money from Julian's life insurance policy?"
My father straightened.
"It was used to cover expenses.
The funeral costs, the estate administration, the—"
"Julian's parents paid for the funeral," I said.
"I was there.
I watched his father hand over the check.
I thanked him for it on my knees in their driveway."
My mother's eyes cut sideways to my father.
"There were other expenses," he said.
"Name one."
He didn't.
I took one step toward him.
Just one.
"How much was the policy worth?"
Eleanor's hand pressed harder against her phone.
"Dad." My voice had dropped to almost nothing.
"How much was the policy worth?"
"Four hundred thousand dollars," he said.
The number landed in the room like something thrown from a great height.
"And where is it?"
My father looked at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before.
Not guilt exactly.
Something older and more defended than guilt.
The look of a man who had already decided, long ago, that what he had done was reasonable.
"It was managed," he said.
"Distributed across necessary costs.
Eleanor's practice needed—"
"Eleanor's practice." I said it so quietly it barely made sound.
Eleanor stood up.
"I was going to pay it back.
I always intended—"
"Get out of my house," I said.
"Sienna—"
"Get out of my house right now."
My father took one step forward.
"If you would just let us explain the full—"
"The Gazette reporter," I said, "is going to call me for that follow-up piece.
And when she does, I am going to answer every single question she asks." I looked at each of them in turn.
"Get out."
They left.
I stood in the middle of my living room and listened to the car back out of the driveway.
I listened until the sound of the engine disappeared entirely.
Then I picked up my phone and called Aunt Ruth.
She answered on the second ring.
"They took the insurance money," I said.
A long pause.
"How much?" she said.
"Four hundred thousand."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Sienna," she said.
May you like
"You need a lawyer.
Tonight."
