Chapter 7 - The Real Reason Mary Needed My Room
Three days later, James showed up at Reed’s office asking to speak to me.
He looked like a man who hadn’t slept properly since the deputies arrived.
Reed let him into the conference room but stayed nearby.
James kept his hands flat on the table.
“I’m filing for separation,” he said.
That wasn’t what I expected.
I said nothing.
He swallowed. “Mary lied to me about the house. She told me your grandfather died without a will, that your parents handled everything, and that you were just refusing to grow up and move out.”
I stared at him.
He looked ashamed. Good.
“Why were you so desperate to move in?” I asked.
He rubbed his jaw. “Because my hospital transfer wasn’t really a transfer.”
There it was.
The thing that had made him look so hollow at dinner.
“I was put on administrative leave,” he said quietly. “There’s an internal review over charting errors. It may blow over, but Mary knew we couldn’t count on my income for a while.”
And suddenly her tour of the house made perfect sense.
She hadn’t been admiring.
She had been scouting.
“We were behind on the condo,” he admitted. “Mary thought living here would buy time.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“So she decided to solve her financial problem by stealing my space.”
He nodded once.
“There’s more.”
He slid his phone across the table.
On the screen was a text thread between him and Mary from the day before the dinner.
JAMES: Are you sure Laura can’t fight this?
MARY: Mom says Laura has no backbone.
JAMES: Whose name is on the house?
MARY: Doesn’t matter. Mom will handle Laura.
I read it twice.
Then I handed the phone back.
“Will you authenticate those?”
“If I have to.”
“Why?”
He gave a small, defeated laugh. “Because I should’ve walked out when your mother picked up the bat. Since I didn’t, this is the least I can do.”
It didn’t make him noble.
But it made him useful.
After he left, Reed looked at me over his glasses.
“That text helps.”
“It also explains everything.”
“Almost everything,” Reed said.
He opened a side drawer and removed another folder—thicker, older, stamped with Frank Bennett’s estate file number.
“There’s one part of your grandfather’s planning we still haven’t needed to use,” he said. “I was saving it unless the situation worsened.”
My chest tightened.
“What part?”
May you like
Reed rested his hand on the file.
“The part he prepared in case Diane or Mary ever tried exactly this.”
