Chapter 5: Someone Else Knew
Dominic sat in the east sitting room for two full minutes after Brooke left.
Then he went to find Emma.
She was in the kitchen, standing at the counter with her hands wrapped around a mug she hadn't drunk from.
She looked up when he came in.
"She said someone else knew," he said.
Emma set the mug down.
"About the plan.
The cottage.
Marcus's offer." He stopped at the other side of the counter.
"Who else knew?"
Emma was quiet for a moment.
Not the quiet of someone who didn't know.
The quiet of someone deciding how much to say.
"There was a dinner," she said finally.
"Three months ago.
While you were in Boston.
Brooke had guests — I assumed it was a social evening.
But the two men she had over weren't friends.
I recognized one of them later.
He's a partner at a firm that handles acquisitions for Marcus Harrington's company."
"Who was the other one?"
Emma looked at him carefully.
"His name is Richard Hale."
Dominic went very still.
Richard Hale was the executor of Catherine Mercer's estate.
He had been the family's legal representative for eleven years.
He had drafted the trust himself.
"You're certain," Dominic said.
"I served them dinner," Emma said.
"I'm certain."
Dominic turned and walked to the window.
The rain had stopped.
The garden was gray and wet and very quiet.
"She said I'm not the only one who knew about this plan," he said, almost to himself.
"She was warning you," Emma said.
"Or threatening you.
I'm not sure which."
"Both." He turned back.
"If Hale was involved — if he helped them find the weakness in the trust — then this wasn't something Brooke put together in the last few weeks.
This goes back months."
"Before the engagement?"
"Possibly."
Emma picked up her mug again.
Put it down again without drinking.
"There's something else," she said.
He waited.
"Two weeks ago, Natalie asked me if I thought Dominic was happy." Emma paused.
"She said Brooke had told her that you were planning to sell the coastal properties.
That you'd already had preliminary conversations with a buyer.
That the estate itself might eventually be divided."
"I never said that."
"I know."
"I've never had that conversation with anyone."
"I know." Emma looked at him steadily.
"But Natalie believed it.
She's been quietly looking at rental properties in Providence for the last ten days.
She didn't want to burden you."
The kitchen was very still.
Dominic's sister had been looking at rental properties.
A grieving widow with a nine-year-old boy, quietly preparing to leave the only stable home she had found since her husband d*ed — because Brooke had told her, carefully and privately, that she had no future here.
"Where is Natalie now?" he asked.
"Upstairs with Noah.
She's been keeping him home from school this week.
She told me he's been having nightmares."
Dominic moved toward the door.
"Which room?"
"The blue room.
Second floor, east wing."
He stopped in the doorway.
"Emma.
Everything you just told me — the dinner, Hale, what Brooke said to Natalie — I need you to write it down.
Dates, names, what you saw, what you heard.
Everything."
"All right."
"Don't send it anywhere yet.
Just write it down."
"I will."
He went upstairs.
The blue room door was closed.
He knocked softly.
A pause, then Natalie's voice.
"Come in."
She was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Noah was beside her with a book open on his lap, though he wasn't reading it.
When Dominic came in, the boy looked up — and something in his small face shifted.
Not quite relief.
Something more complicated than that.
The look of a child who had been told, in indirect ways, that the adults around him were not entirely safe, seeing one of them appear and not yet knowing which category he belonged to.
Dominic sat down in the chair across from them.
"Hey, bud," he said to Noah.
"Hey," Noah said carefully.
Dominic looked at his sister.
"You've been looking at apartments in Providence," he said.
Natalie's face changed.
"She told you," Natalie said flatly.
"Emma told me.
Natalie — why didn't you tell me?"
"Because Brooke said you were already planning to restructure the estate." Her voice was even, but her hands tightened in her lap.
"She said you'd been under a lot of pressure and you didn't want to have the conversation directly.
She said it would be better if I started making my own arrangements quietly."
"That is not true."
"I know that now."
"I mean none of it is true.
I have never discussed selling this property.
I have never asked anyone to have that conversation on my behalf.
I have never—" He stopped.
Took a breath.
"Natalie.
This is your home.
It was Mom's wish and it is my promise.
Nothing has changed."
Natalie looked at him for a long moment.
Then her eyes filled.
She didn't cry — not fully.
She pressed her lips together and looked at the window, and Noah reached over without looking up from his book and put his small hand on top of hers.
That was all.
Dominic watched his nine-year-old nephew comfort his mother and felt something settle into place inside him.
Cold and clear and entirely decided.
"I need to ask you something," he said.
"And I need you to tell me everything you remember."
Natalie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"About Brooke?"
"About all of it.
Everything she said to you.
Every conversation.
Every time she asked you to do something or told you something about me or about the estate." He leaned forward.
"I need to understand how long this has been happening."
Natalie looked at her son.
Noah turned a page in his book, pretending not to listen.
"Since January," she said quietly.
January was three months before the engagement was announced.
Dominic said nothing.
But the number sat in the room like a stone dropped into still water, and the ripples it made reached all the way back to the beginning.
Upstairs, a door opened and closed.
Brooke's heels crossed the floor above them.
May you like
Then silence.
Then, faintly, the sound of a phone call beginning.
