My mother’s face filled the tablet screen, and for several seconds I could not hear anything except the blood beating behind my ears.
She looked healthier than she had during the last months of her life.
Her hair was brushed back.
She wore the cream sweater with the loose cuff she had refused to repair.
Behind her were the shelves in her study, business ledgers mixed with framed photographs, exactly as I remembered them.
Then Margaret Sullivan looked directly into the camera.
“Eliza, if Garrett is still living in your house, you cannot let him know what I’m about to tell you.”
I stopped breathing.
Harrison Whitfield sat across from me without moving.
On the desk beside the tablet, the folder he had just opened waited beneath his hand.
My mother continued.
“I hope I am wrong.
I would rather leave you an embarrassing warning than leave you unprotected because I was too polite to speak.”
That sounded so much like her that my eyes burned.
She had never been afraid of being impolite when something mattered.
“I began worrying about Garrett several months ago,” she said.
“Not because he was charming.
Charm is cheap.
I became concerned because he was curious in very specific ways.”
I felt my fingers curl around the edge of the chair.
“He asked questions about the vineyard’s ownership structure.
He wanted to know which properties were held directly and which were inside the trust.
He asked what would happen if I died before making changes to my estate.”
I stared at the screen.
Garrett had asked me some of those questions too.
At the time, they had sounded practical.
What happens to the vineyard if your mom can’t run it?
Who signs things if she gets worse?
Does Sienna inherit part of it?
I had answered because husbands were supposed to be people you answered.
My mother’s expression tightened.
“At first, I assumed he was trying to help you prepare.
Then I learned he had been asking people questions when you were not present.”
Harrison slid a sheet from the folder but kept it facedown.
On the video, Mom paused.
“What worried me most was not Garrett alone,” she said.
“It was Sienna.”
My stomach dropped even though part of me had already known.
I saw dark green silk beside the fountain.
Heard that familiar laugh.
Heard Garrett say, Once I get access to those accounts, we’re set.
My mother looked tired now.
“I love your sister.
Everything I did in my will regarding her was intended to keep her alive long enough to become herself again.
But she is vulnerable, angry, and ashamed.
Those are dangerous things when someone else knows how to use them.”
I covered my mouth.
Mom continued.
“I saw them together twice when they believed I was asleep.
Nothing I saw proved an affair.
But what I heard proved they were keeping something from you.”
There it was.
Not a dramatic accusation.
Not certainty where certainty did not exist.
Just my mother, careful even from beyond the grave.
“I confronted neither of them,” she said.
