Chapter 4 - I Stopped Letting Them Control the Records
I hired an attorney.
Not because I wanted to sue my parents.
Because every time I asked a question, Dad turned it into a conversation about loyalty.
Rebecca Sloan practiced family and civil litigation in Stamford and had the calmest voice I had heard all week.
“Your first goal is information,” she said. “Don’t decide what to do with it before you have it.”
She helped me request the fire investigation, insurance records that were legally available to me, and documents from Whitmore Residential, the real-estate company Dad had controlled for nearly twenty-five years.
That last request cost me.
Dad removed me from the family foundation’s junior board program within twenty-four hours.
His email was one sentence.
Until you stop attacking this family, you will not represent it.
I forwarded it to Rebecca.
She replied:
Keep everything. Do not argue by email.
Sienna came to Harper’s apartment that evening.
She was wearing jeans, no makeup, and looked sixteen for the first time since she turned twelve.
“Can I come in?”
“Why?”
Her eyes dropped.
“Because I did something horrible.”
I let her enter.
She apologized.
Not elegantly.
She cried too much, explained too much, and kept saying she hadn’t known.
Finally I stopped her.
“You knew humiliating me was cruel.”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
“Not knowing why I had scars doesn’t excuse that.”
“I know.”
That was the first useful thing she said.
Then she opened her backpack.
Inside were old photographs, invoices, and a binder she had taken from Dad’s home office.
“I started looking after you left.”
One invoice was dated four days before the fire.
North Wing Electrical Renovation — temporary alarm bypass requested by owner.
Owner:
Richard Whitmore.
May you like
Dad had personally authorized the nursery wing’s alarms to be bypassed.
The candle story was suddenly not enough.
