“Send it to my attorney.”
“If Cynthia finds out, she’ll make Elias take everything from my apartment. He has a key.”
“Then change your locks.”
“I can’t. It’s his lease.”
I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
Every answer opened another room.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t,” Brenda said. “But you should listen.”
Behind me, the kitchen door opened. Rebecca stepped onto the patio, saw my face, and stopped.
I looked at her and said into the phone, “Where?”
Brenda named a café in Oakland near Lake Merritt.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Nine. I’ll sit outside. I’ll wear a green coat.”
“If you don’t show?”
“Then I’m probably in trouble.”
The call ended before I could answer.
Rebecca crossed the garden. “Who was that?”
I handed her the phone.
“Brenda.”
Her expression changed very little, but I saw the concern settle behind her eyes.
“What did she say?”
I told her everything.
When I said Paul’s name, Rebecca went still.
“You know him,” I said.
She looked toward the roses, then back at me.
“Yes.”
“My uncle.”
“Yes.”
“What happened between him and my father?”
“That is a question for Jonathan.”
“Rebecca.”
She sighed. “It was before my time as family counsel.”
“But you know something.”
“I know enough to say this may be more complicated than a bad marriage.”
That night, I asked my father about Paul Mercer.
We were in the library again. He had been reviewing documents, a pair of reading glasses low on his nose. When I said Paul’s name, he removed them slowly.
“Where did you hear that?”
“From Brenda.”
His face closed.
It was not anger. It was a door slamming shut.
“What did she say?”
“That Cynthia wrote your daughter was the cleanest way back in.”
For a moment, my father looked older than his sixty-two years.
Then he stood and walked to the fireplace, though no fire was lit.
“Paul was your mother’s brother,” he said.
“I know that part.”
“He was charming. Brilliant when he wanted to be. Careless when it mattered. Your mother loved him past reason.”
“What did he do?”
My father’s jaw flexed.
“He nearly destroyed the company.”
“How?”
“He signed contracts he had no authority to sign. Took advances. Made promises to smaller subcontractors using the Wilson name. When the projects collapsed, people lost money. Some lost their businesses. I covered what I could.”
“And then?”
“And then he disappeared.”
“Where does Cynthia fit?”
“I don’t know.”
But he said it too quickly.
“Dad.”
He turned.
The grief in his face startled me.
“Your mother begged me not to pursue charges,” he said quietly. “Paul was her last living family besides you. She believed he would come back and make it right.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
Again, not quite a lie. Not quite the truth.
“Rebecca said this may be more complicated than a bad marriage.”
“It may be.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I hoped I would never have to.”
“That’s not an answer.”
His shoulders lowered.
“No. I wasn’t.”
