Chapter 6: A Toast for Whitney

I slid my hidden phone up my sleeve before Philip crossed the room.

The old phone was still in my other hand.

"Give me that," he said.

I held it out.

He took it and looked at the lit screen, where the voice memos were open.

"You want to hear them?" he asked. "Fine."

He tapped one and set it on the desk between us.

*I'd marry him,* said my voice, *and take the money.*

The words were clipped from two different days, and the join was almost smooth.

I had heard it a hundred times in my sleep.

Philip watched my face.

"Your own voice," he said. "I played it for you the day I found it. You cried and said it wasn't true."

"It wasn't."

"And yet there it is."

"Whitney cut it together."

"Whitney was eighteen and grieving her mother."

"Whitney was eighteen and selling her mother's emeralds on Wickenden Street," I said.

The room changed.

It was a small change.

His hand stopped on the phone.

Then his face went smooth again.

"Who told you that?"

"You signed the claim, Philip."

"I signed a form my lawyer put in front of me."

"For jewelry that was already sold."

"You're upset," he said. "People say wild things at two in the morning."

He put the phone in his pocket.

I let him.

Everything on it was already in a folder he could not reach.

"Is that what you came down here for?" he asked. "To hear yourself?"

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