The Widow's Fate They Chose Was My Escape Plan novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Who Wrote Page Nine
Conrad came in through the tent flap forty minutes after the police took Desmond.
He had not gone far.
He had landed in Manhattan that morning, and my third brother had phoned him from the guard room at noon, and he had taken the next plane back.
My third brother walked behind him with a hand on his collar.
The guests had not left.
Four hundred people stood in knots under the lights, holding their drinks and their phones, and the state attorney sat at table four taking statements.
Conrad stopped inside the entrance.
He looked at the stage, and at me on it, and at the empty microphone stand.
"Willa," he said.
"Come up here."
"Not in front of all these people."
"They're the people you sold me to. They can hear it."
He did not move.
My second brother stepped out from the crowd and put a hand between his shoulder blades.
Conrad walked up the stage steps slowly, one hand on the rail.
"Desmond told me to ask you something," I said.
I held the microphone low, so everyone would lean in.
"He said to ask who wrote page nine."
Conrad's face did not change.
His hands did.
"It was a Keane family clause," he said. "It's been in their agreements for generations. Everyone knew that."
"May I?" said the Keane family lawyer.
He had come up behind the stage with his case, a thin man with spectacles, not the state attorney at table four, who had spent three days at the end of Desmond's table saying nothing.
He opened a folder.
"I drew up the March draft," he said. "The clause, as my firm wrote it, reads: The surviving spouse may reside in the family household or depart with her settlement after one year."
"After one year," I repeated.
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