Room 14's Secret: The Heiress Who Outsmarted Her Betrayers novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Attorney

Her grandmother's attorney and Matthew Ransome bring proof Stewart planned it all, and learn Stewart wants Alicia named conservator of Adele's fortune.

"The doctor said I sit in," the nurse said.

"The doctor is mistaken." The attorney held out a sheet of paper without looking at it.

"A patient-rights consultation is confidential. You can read the statute while you wait in the hall."

The nurse didn't take the paper.

She looked at me, slumped in the chair.

"She won't understand a word you say."

"Then you won't miss anything."

The nurse went out.

The door didn't close behind her.

A hand caught it from the hallway, a big hand with rope calluses across the palm.

A man stepped in carrying a leather briefcase in his grip.

He was huge. Broad through the shoulders, dark blond hair cut close, a scar through one eyebrow.

He shut the door and leaned his back on it.

Then he looked at me.

The last time I'd seen Matthew Ransome I was nineteen, home from college for my father's memorial mass.

He'd stood at the back of the church in a borrowed suit and left before the coffee.

The time before that, I was fourteen, and he was carrying me off the dock in Gloucester while I screamed for my father.

"Hey, Del," he said quietly.

Nobody had called me that in fifteen years.

I sat up.

I wiped my own chin with the back of my hand.

The attorney's shoulders dropped.

"Oh, thank God," she said. "Thank God. Your grandmother has not slept since midnight."

"Is she here?"

"In a hotel in Greenwich with four phones, threatening to buy the clinic."

"Don't let her."

"I'm trying." She sat down across from me and opened the briefcase Matthew set on the table.

"We have ten minutes before that woman reads the statute. So listen."

She took out a folder and laid the pages out one by one, facing me.

An invoice on the letterhead of Dunford Family Law.

Alicia's firm.

"Investigative services, retained agent," it said. Eighteen months ago.

Under it, a report. My father's name. My mother's. My grandmother's.

A photograph of the Wainwright house on the harbor, taken from a boat.

"He paid twenty-two thousand dollars to find out who you were," the attorney said. "Then he went to work."

The next page was a sheet of yellow legal paper, photocopied.

I knew the handwriting.

I'd seen it on grocery lists for nine years.

A diagram. My name in a box. Arrows to two smaller boxes. EDIE. FLORA.

Beside them, a number with a lot of zeros, and the word "conservator."

At the bottom, underlined twice: "Ward needs to be voluntary-looking. Ask A."

I put my finger on the "A."

"Where did you get this?"

"His secretary threw it out," Matthew said. "His recycling goes to a public curb."

"You went through his recycling."

"Three weeks of it." He shrugged. "I've done worse things for less."

I almost laughed.

It came out as a cough.

The attorney closed the folder.

"The car is at the side door. Matthew carries you down the back stairs, and you're on the jet by noon."

"By tonight every newspaper in Connecticut has this."

"No."

They both looked at me.

"There are eleven names scratched under my bed," I said. "Women. The oldest is nine years old. Each one has a K after it."

"K," the attorney said.

"Kickback. Kearns. I don't know yet."

"But three of those women are sitting in the dayroom down the hall, and one of them has been here nine years."

"Del," Matthew said.

"If I walk out today, the clinic knows someone's looking. Records disappear. Those women get moved to places nobody can find."

I made my voice steady.

"If I stay until Friday, I can find out who paid. I can get the ledger. I can get the names."

"You are in a locked ward," the attorney said.

"I've been in a locked ward for six weeks. Four more days won't kill me."

"They're injecting you."

"With saline. The orderly's handling it."

Matthew pushed off the door.

He crouched in front of my wheelchair so his eyes were level with mine.

Up close he smelled like cold air and coffee.

"This is insane," he said.

"I know."

"You could have walked out last week."

"I didn't know about them last week."

He looked at me for a long moment.

He had the same steady look he'd had on the pilot boat, reading weather off the water.

"Your father used to do this," he said. "Pick the worst possible idea and then make it work out of sheer stubbornness."

"Did it work?"

"Mostly." He stood up. "Fine. Four days. I'm at the gate every night, and I want that orderly's number."

"I don't know her name."

"Then I'll learn it."

Something in my chest unlocked a little.

The attorney was writing fast.

"There's one more thing," she said, without looking up. "You need to hear it before you decide."

"I've decided."

"Then you need to hear it anyway." She turned the legal pad around.

"Stewart's lawyers filed a second petition yesterday afternoon. Friday's hearing isn't only about the girls."

"What else?"

"He's asking the court to declare you incompetent." She tapped the page.

"If it does, your share of the trust goes to a conservator, whoever the court names. Your husband nominated one."

The doorknob turned.

The nurse was coming back.

"Who?" I said.

The attorney's mouth went thin again.

"Alicia Dunford."

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