Chapter 3

I found my father in the library, away from the tent and the caterers and the wife who arranged his life like a table setting.

He stood by the window with his back to me. The same posture he’d held on the lawn. The same cowardice, dressed in wool.

“You knew,” I said.

He turned. “Mara-”

I held up my phone. The photograph of the mortgage assignment filled the screen. My forged name sat at the bottom like a stain.

“Eighteen months ago,” I said. “Someone signed my name to borrow against Wren Hall. Someone took the money. You were the trustee then. You signed the documents she put in front of you.”

His face went gray. “She told me it was a formality.”

“A formality.”

“She said the estate needed liquidity. She said your mother’s trust required a family signature, and you wouldn’t answer calls. I didn’t read every page.” He swallowed. “I saw your name. I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I was trying to keep the peace.”

The words landed between us like something broken. I thought of all the years I had kept my own peace. All the holidays I had skipped. All the calls I had let go to voicemail because I couldn’t stand Delphine’s voice in the background, claiming my mother’s pendant, my mother’s house, my mother’s place.

“You let her forge my signature,” I said. “You let her put my name on a debt I didn’t owe.”

“I didn’t know she forged it.”

“You suspected.”

He didn’t deny it.

“Mara, please. Not today. Grant’s engagement. The donors. Your father’s foundation. If this comes out now, it will destroy us.”

“Us,” I repeated. “There hasn’t been an us since you let her hand me an apron at my own mother’s house.”

He stepped toward me, hands out. “Wait until after the weekend. I’ll fix it. I’ll talk to Delphine. I’ll make her undo whatever she did.”

“You can’t undo a forgery by talking.”

“Please.”

I put the phone back in my apron pocket. “I’m not promising you anything.”

His eyes filled. “Are you the one who bought the mortgage?”

I looked at him for a long moment. “You’ll find out at the brunch.”

I left him there. Behind me, I heard him sit down heavily in my mother’s reading chair. I didn’t turn around. If I had, I might have softened. And I had learned that softening was how my family survived.

I couldn’t afford to survive that way anymore.