My Sister Faked the Fall. This Time, I Filmed It. novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Larkspur Letter

At dawn I called the sergeant, and by eight Kylie was in an interview room telling her story to a recorder.

She did not ask me to stay, and I did not offer.

At ten I drove up Larkspur Hill with Theo in the back seat and Finbar in the passenger seat, one bandaged hand resting on the camera bag.

Gran's house sat at the top, white and square, with a porch swing she had painted blue every spring.

Her lawyer waited on the steps with a thin leather folder.

"I'm sorry about the contest," he said, and took my hand in both of his. "It was filed within hours of your shower. Someone is very impatient."

"Is it going to work?"

"Come inside."

We sat in her front room, under the clock she had wound every Sunday.

Theo slept in my arms.

The lawyer opened the folder and took out a cream envelope with my name on it in Gran's slanting hand.

"She asked me to give you this only if your mother contested the trust," he said. "She told me it would happen."

I broke the seal.

My grandmother had written it on pale blue paper, and the smell of her lavender soap came off the page.

I read it twice, silently, then aloud to the room.

"Willa. If you are reading this, Gisela has put out her hand. I have loved her for forty years because she made your father happy. But she has always loved things more than people, and I have watched her borrow against his good name since the day he died."

My throat closed.

I went on.

"The pearls are real. Hers were never. I paid for her good opinion of herself for twenty years and I am done. The trust is yours, and your child's, and nobody can touch it unless they have charge of that child. Guard him. Do not let anyone with a pen and a smile take him from you."

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