Chapter 10: My Brother
He called me the night after the arrest.
I was on the sofa with Sophie asleep against my shoulder, the television playing something neither of us had been watching.
I carried the phone into the kitchen and answered.
"She's been charged," he said.
His voice was flat in a way I had never heard from him before.
Preston had always had texture to his voice — authority, or amusement, or impatience.
This was none of those things.
This was just empty.
"I know."
"The diamond was in her name.
Her maiden name." A pause.
"She kept her maiden name on the safety deposit box.
Three years, and I didn't know she had it."
I didn't say anything.
"Evelyn." His voice broke slightly on the second syllable.
Just slightly.
"Sophie.
Is she—"
"She's fine.
She's asleep on my sofa right now."
A long silence.
"I didn't know about the diamond," he said.
"I need you to know that."
"I believe you."
"I saw Sophie near the brooch table and Catherine said—" He stopped.
"I believed her.
I didn't ask.
I just—" Another stop.
"She was my wife.
I believed her."
"I know."
"That doesn't make it right."
"No," I said.
"It doesn't."
The kitchen was quiet.
Outside, a car passed.
The refrigerator hummed.
"What do I do?" he said.
It was not a strategic question.
It was not the golden child of the Vance family asking for a plan.
It was just a man who had hjt a child and was now sitting inside the consequences of it, and didn't know how to find his way out.
I thought about it honestly.
"You start by talking to Sophie," I said.
"Not to me.
Not to Mom and Dad.
To Sophie.
You look her in the eye and you tell her what you did was wrong and that it was not her fault.
You don't explain.
You don't justify.
You just say it."
Silence.
"And then," I said, "you cooperate fully with the State's Attorney.
Everything you know about Catherine, everything she said to you, every conversation — you give them all of it."
"And after that?"
"After that, Preston, I don't know.
That part is up to you." I leaned against the counter.
"But those two things first.
In that order."
He was quiet for so long I thought he might have hung up.
Then: "Okay."
Just that.
One word.
It was not forgiveness.
It was not repair.
It was the first small step onto a road that would be long and uncertain and would require him to become someone different than he had been raised to be.
But it was a step.
"Goodnight, Preston," I said.
"Goodnight, Evelyn."
I hung up and stood in the kitchen for a moment.
Then I went back to the sofa, lifted Sophie's head gently, and settled her against a pillow.
She stirred but didn't wake.
May you like
I turned the television off.
The room was quiet and dark and entirely ours.
