Chapter 7 - What Lily Remembered
Nathan worked with Lily’s therapist rather than questioning her himself.
Fragments emerged.
Christmas lights.
Sarah’s bedroom.
Margaret arguing with Rebecca in the hall.
“Grandma said, ‘He can never know,’” Lily remembered.
Then Lily pointed to an old photograph.
“Grandpa was there.”
Charles had officially been dead for nine years.
Nathan confronted him.
Charles admitted Sarah called him that night because she wanted evidence transferred to Nathan. Margaret arrived and an argument followed.
“Did anyone hurt Sarah?” Nathan asked.
“No.”
Charles also revealed Sarah had not planned to divorce Nathan. The attorney Margaret mentioned handled trusts. Sarah wanted Margaret removed from Lily’s inheritance arrangements.
Another lie collapsed.
On December twenty-third Nathan removed Aaron from Colewell, announced an independent audit, and established new safeguards. He refused to publicly discuss Lily’s private suffering.
At home Lily built a gingerbread house.
It collapsed.
She stared at it.
Then she laughed.
No punishment. No panic.
Just broken gingerbread.
Christmas Eve arrived.
Nathan invited only people Lily wanted.
Margaret was not among them.
She came anyway.
Nathan met her outside.
“It’s Christmas,” she pleaded.
“That doesn’t erase boundaries.”
“I’m her grandmother.”
“You should have remembered that when she was hungry.”
Margaret stared through the window at Lily laughing.
Then she said, “You don’t know what Sarah did.”
Nathan turned away.
“Lily isn’t the child named in Sarah’s original trust.”
He stopped.
“What?”
“Ask Rebecca why Sarah changed the beneficiary.”
Nathan refused to let another secret manipulate him.
“Goodnight.”
Then Margaret shouted one name.
“Emma!”
May you like
Nathan turned.
“Ask Rebecca who Emma Cole is.”
