Victoria turned to her husband.
Her voice dropped, but the room was too quiet for privacy.
“You told me the company was yours.”
Thomas did not answer.
“Thomas.”
“Not now.”
“You said this meeting was a formality.”
He snapped his head toward her.
“I said not now.”
I watched them and remembered Victoria studying Richard’s antique vases the evening before.
For a brief, ugly second, I wondered whether losing the inheritance would reveal more about their marriage than inheriting it ever could.
But I had not made my decision because of Victoria.
And I had not made it because I wanted Thomas humiliated.
That distinction mattered.
I reached for the envelope from Richard’s safe.
Thomas saw his father’s handwriting on the front.
His anger faltered.
“What is that?”
“A letter Richard left for me.”
“About me?”
“Partly.”
He held out his hand.
“Give it to me.”
I hesitated.
Richard had written it to me, not Thomas.
It contained the last private words my husband would ever give me.
But there was one passage Thomas needed to see.
I slid the letter across the table.
“Read the first page.”
Thomas took it.
His eyes moved quickly at first.
Then more slowly.
I watched him reach the sentence that had broken something open inside me the night before.
Our son is not the man we raised him to be.
Thomas stopped.
For several seconds, he stared at the page.
When he looked up, his face was different.
Not remorseful exactly.
Wounded.
“He wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“While he was sick?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe him?”
I felt my throat tighten.
“I spent most of your life refusing to believe him whenever he worried about you.”
Thomas’s eyes narrowed.
“So he poisoned you against me before he died.”
There it was.
Even with Richard’s handwriting in his hands, Thomas had found a way to make himself the victim.
I reached across the table and took the letter back.
“No.
Your father gave me a choice.
Yesterday, you made it clear which choice I had to make.”
Thomas stared at me.
“Because of the funeral.”
