Is everyone insane?”
Mr.
Dawson folded the page halfway down and looked at him.
“No accusation has been made by me, Mr.
Reed.
I am reading your wife’s instructions.”
“Dead wife,” Jason snapped.
The words landed so harshly that Ava flinched.
I stared at him.
He seemed to realize what he had said, because his expression immediately softened.
“I mean—Emily was upset.
She was pregnant.
She was emotional.
She imagined things.”
Sarah’s face changed.
“Don’t do that to her now.”
Jason turned on her.
“Stay out of this.”
“She asked me to stay in it.”
Sarah opened her purse again.
This time she removed a small storage device and held it tightly in her palm.
Jason saw it.
His shoulders went rigid.
I looked at Sarah.
“What is that?”
Her eyes filled.
“Copies.
Emily didn’t trust one place anymore.”
Jason stepped toward her.
Two things happened at once.
Mr.
Dawson raised one hand, and one of the funeral attendants moved between Jason and Sarah.
Jason stopped only inches from the man.
“Give that to me.”
Sarah closed her fingers around the device.
“No.”
It was the quietest word spoken in the chapel all morning, and somehow it carried farther than Jason’s shouting.
Mr.
Dawson returned to the letter.
“Emily’s instructions continue.
If Jason interferes, threatens anyone, destroys documents, or attempts to access the trust outside the required process, the sealed evidence package is to be sent to police, the insurance investigator, and the district attorney.”
Jason stared at him.
Then at Sarah.
Then at the funeral attendant standing between them.
His hands were trembling.
“I didn’t threaten anybody.”
Mr.
Dawson’s gaze shifted toward the witnesses around us.
“Then I suggest you stop now.”
For several seconds, nobody moved.
The air smelled of lilies and candle wax.
Emily’s coffin remained open at the front of the room, silent beneath all of it.
I suddenly understood why she had chosen this moment.
Jason had spent years controlling what happened behind closed doors.
A private disagreement could be rewritten.
A missing receipt could be explained.
