She sat. Her hands were shaking worse than mine had been in that elevator.
“How long have you been coming on these trips?”
“This is only the second one. I swear to you, Erin, only the second.”
“And Grant?”
“Nothing’s happened. Nothing physical. I would never do that to you, I swear it.”
I studied her face. She was telling the truth about that much, at least.
“Then what are you doing here, Nora?”
Her eyes went wet, and she cried the way she used to when we were kids, quiet, trying not to get caught. “Sandra called me last spring. She said you and Grant were already basically separated — that you were the one who wanted out, but you were too embarrassed to tell the family. She said Grant was falling apart and needed somebody around who cared about him. She said you’d actually asked her to keep me close to him because you trusted me.”
“I never said one word of that.”
“I know that now.”
She reached for my hand across the bar. I didn’t take it. I didn’t pull away either.
“There’s a piece of property,” I said. “A beach lot Grant’s grandfather left to me. Sandra had it moved out of my name with a forged signature. She’s filing paperwork Monday morning to finish it.”
Nora’s mouth fell open. “Oh my God, Erin.”
“You were the noise, Nora. You were the thing that kept me looking the wrong way.”
She put her forehead down on the bar and cried harder.
I stood. I didn’t have time to feel any of this yet.
“Go home,” I said. “Book a flight out tonight. We’ll talk later. Right now I have somewhere to be.”
“Erin—”
“Later, Nora.”
Chapter 4 – The Reckoning
I walked back to the elevator with the property records loading on my phone and my attorney’s number already dialed. Fourteenth floor. Sandra’s suite. The bracelet, the trust papers, four quiet years of excuses — it all sat in my chest like a fist closing.
I wasn’t the woman who’d walked into this hotel two hours earlier. That woman had come to catch a lie.
The woman getting off this elevator had come to take back what was hers.
I knocked once. Grant opened the door, and every ounce of color drained out of his face the second he saw me standing there.
“Erin. What are you—”
“Move.”
