Chapter 5: The Brother's Confession
I called the number back immediately.
It rang four times.
Then: "I wasn't sure you'd call."
"Who else was involved, Gavin?"
A long pause.
In the background I could hear traffic, wind.
He was outside somewhere.
"I need you to understand that I didn't know about the forged document," he said.
"I want to be clear about that.
What she did with the signature — that was Rebecca alone.
I didn't know until this morning when she called me from the car park outside the chapel."
"But you knew something."
Another pause.
Shorter this time.
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"The boarding school wasn't Rebecca's idea originally," he said.
"It was our mother's.
Patricia has never believed you were the right match for Rebecca.
She thought Emily was the obstacle.
If Emily was placed somewhere — somewhere appropriate, she always said, like that made it better — then Rebecca would have your full attention and your full income."
"Your mother planned this."
"She suggested it.
Rebecca chose to act on it.
There's a difference, but I understand if you don't see one right now."
I didn't answer that.
"There's something else," Gavin said.
"The facility in Harwick.
It wasn't just a boarding school.
I looked it up after Rebecca told me the name.
It's a long-term residential placement program.
Children stay there for years, Daniel.
Years.
They're allowed two family visits per term."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Two visits per term," I repeated.
"I'm sorry.
I should have said something sooner.
I noticed things over the past year — conversations that stopped when I walked into the room, a phone call Rebecca took in the garden that she never explained.
I told myself it wasn't my business." His voice dropped.
"It was my business.
She's a seven-year-old girl."
"Why are you telling me now?"
"Because my mother just called me from the chapel car park and told me to delete this number and say nothing.
And I realized that the only person I'd be protecting by doing that is her."
I heard Emily laugh at something on the television.
A short, bright sound.
"I'm going to need you to say this to my solicitor," I said.
"I know.
That's why I called."
"Tomorrow morning.
Ten o'clock.
David Marsh's office on Calder Street."
"I'll be there."
I ended the call and stood at the window for a long time.
Patricia.
I had met her forty, perhaps fifty times over two years.
She had always been pleasant.
Careful with her words.
She had given Emily a stuffed rabbit at Christmas that Emily still slept with.
The rabbit was on Emily's bed right now, one room away.
I went to the living room doorway.
Emily was lying on her stomach on the rug, chin in her hands, watching the screen.
The flowers that had been in her hair were sitting on the cushion beside her.
She had taken them out herself and laid them there neatly, the way she did with things she wanted to keep.
"Em."
She looked up.
"I love you," I said.
She looked at me for a moment with those serious eyes.
"I know, Daddy." Then she turned back to the television.
I went back to the kitchen and sat down.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was Rebecca's name on the screen.
I watched it ring.
It stopped.
Then a message appeared beneath the missed call notification.
*We need to talk before you do something you can't take back.
There are things about your mother you don't know.
Meet me tonight.
May you like
Alone.
Don't bring the solicitor.*
