Chapter 6 - The Woman Wearing Emeralds
Camille asked me to meet her at a hotel bar, alone, without attorneys. Her invitation arrived from a private number and included a photograph of my mother's emerald necklace. Beneath it she wrote: Some things belong with the family. Come discuss them like an adult.
I declined the private meeting and offered a daytime conference room at my lawyer's office. She replied with a row of laughing emojis. Two hours later, Vanessa posted another video describing me as an ungrateful son trying to bankrupt the father who'd raised him.
I should have been immune by then. I wasn't. I'd spent childhood birthdays trying to impress Vanessa with handmade gifts. I knew she preferred expensive things, but when she was eleven, she'd carried a model lighthouse I'd built to school and told her classmates her brother could make anything. I'd thought that girl was still hiding somewhere inside the woman pointing a camera at me.
Maya found me watching the video and quietly closed my laptop. "You've refreshed it eleven times. I counted."
"She knows what happened that night. She filmed it."
"She also knows the version where the villain gets more views. You can't solve that with a twelfth refresh."
"You always have to be right?"
"It's in the partnership agreement."
We were preparing for a demonstration at a regional engineering conference. The room smelled of packing foam, solder, and takeout noodles. Maya showed me the final sensor array, explaining a tiny design adjustment she'd made while I dealt with my family. Her excitement deserved an equal response. I made myself close the browser for good and spent the afternoon testing every input with her.
The demonstration went well. Three hospital administrators asked detailed questions. One of them wanted to know whether our software could identify which old backup panels deserved replacement first. Maya answered with a careful explanation of limits and verification. I watched an audience listen to her in the way I wished my father had ever listened to my mother.
Afterward, a man introduced himself as Julian Frost, a consultant affiliated with my father's redevelopment team. He congratulated us and suggested a very large acquisition offer might follow if I stopped challenging Mercer Properties. His smile stayed polite while he said it.
"Business acquisition proposals go through our board," I replied. "And questions about the trust go through my lawyer."
"Those things can become expensive when they happen simultaneously."
Maya stepped beside me. "Then we're fortunate to have separate budgets for each."
Julian left without offering a business card. We both wrote down the conversation while it was fresh and forwarded the account to counsel. My mother would have approved of the documentation. She would probably also have told Maya to stop embarrassing men with such obvious enjoyment.
That evening, Alice's attorney requested another meeting. An external forensic accountant had reviewed invoices the company produced under lawful demand. Several vendors connected to Harborline shared payment instructions or overlapping managers with businesses whose ownership wasn't clearly disclosed. One subcontractor, Goldhaven Services, had issued large consulting bills during the months my mother questioned the safety upgrades.
"Does Camille own Goldhaven?" I asked.
"We haven't established beneficial ownership," Sandra answered. "There are connections worth investigating. That's different from proving a crime."
Alice described Camille's role in approving invoices, always through intermediaries. She also explained why she had remained silent. Her husband had been recovering from an injury, and her salary provided their health insurance. She'd kept hoping the numbers would eventually be explained by something harmless.
"You don't owe me a confession of how frightened you were," I told her. "I'm glad you're getting legal advice now."
Her eyes filled, and she switched off her camera. It struck me how many people carried damage from a family's arrogance without ever appearing in the family photographs.
Two days later, Vanessa arrived at my workshop without warning. She wore sunglasses indoors and stood beside the half-finished wooden chairs as if she expected sawdust to leap onto her shoes.
"Camille says you're trying to seize Dad's company," she announced.
"Camille's giving you a simplified version."
"You're suing for shares you never earned."
"Mom owned them. She established a trust. You can read the agreement if you want."
She looked away. For a second, I saw my younger sister again. "Dad's furious. You could settle this quietly and everything would go back to normal."
"Normal for whom?"
She wandered toward the finished bench intended for Grandma. When she found the brass plate beneath the seat, she ran her thumb over the words.
"Mom used to say that," she murmured.
"I know."
"Camille says you're using her memory to manipulate Grandma."
I felt anger rise, then subside. "Do you believe everything Camille says, or only the things that make you feel safe?"
Vanessa's face hardened. "You always act morally superior because you wear cheap clothes. Money isn't a crime, Daniel."
"Neither is working with your hands."
She left without saying goodbye. An hour later, she sent a message I couldn't interpret: Ask why Camille needed the emerald necklace on the night Mom signed the transfer.
I called immediately. Vanessa didn't answer. Then I looked at the photograph she'd posted from that earlier evening, one of dozens she'd used to document the family's supposedly perfect life.
Camille was wearing the necklace in the photograph. According to its timestamp, my mother was still alive, and the disputed transfer hadn't yet occurred. I began to wonder whether the necklace was evidence of something more than my father's appalling taste in second wives.
I didn't confront her. Instead, I put the photograph into a folder alongside the dates of every document we already possessed and asked Sandra whether it belonged in the independent review. I knew what I wanted the photograph to mean. I also knew wanting wasn't proof. That distinction had become the narrow bridge between justice and revenge, and some days walking it made my whole body ache.
May you like
For a moment I considered calling my father directly about the photograph. The fantasy was seductive: I would mention the necklace, hear his certainty falter, and finally gain the upper hand. I didn't call. Too many people's livelihoods depended on the company for me to replace careful investigation with a confrontation I'd rehearsed in my imagination. I put my phone on the other side of the desk and went back to the production schedule with Maya.
Late that night, Grandma called to say she'd found one of Mom's old letters. It wasn't dramatic or legally significant. My mother had written that she was proud of how patient I was with difficult machines, because a person who listened to machines might eventually learn to listen to people. I read it twice before going to sleep. I wished she could have met Maya. I wished she could have seen the workshop, and Hannah's purple turbine, and all the ordinary things my father had never thought worth asking about.
