Chapter 13: Which Daughter

"Say it again," I said. "All of it, so I can hear it in daylight."

My father stared at the folder in his lap.

"Hazel, please. Not in the yard."

"You said it in the yard already."

Winifred lifted her phone from her bathrobe pocket and held it up so I could see the red dot.

"I've had this recording since the car pulled in," she said. "The girl at the phone store showed me how."

Maxwell, by the bumper, nodded once and said nothing.

My father's mouth worked.

"Two and a half million, a man at the club, his brother," he said. "Preston paid it last spring. I told him he could have anything he wanted."

"And he wanted me gone from the books."

"He wanted you happy," Dad said. "Brooke wanted him. It seemed like everyone..."

"Stop," Winifred said.

She said it quietly, and my father stopped.

A silver Lexus turned into the street and parked crooked against the curb.

My mother got out in a trench coat over her nightgown, with her hair unpinned.

She had driven forty minutes without doing her face, and I had never once seen that.

"He's not at home," she called, before she saw him. Then she saw him. "There you are."

"You can stop right there," Winifred said. "This is my lawn."

"This is a family matter," Mom said, coming up the walk.

"It's a confession, and I'm the one taping it."

Mom stopped at the foot of the steps and looked up at me.

"Hazel. Get in the car. We'll talk about this at home."

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