“You didn't even come.”
“Exactly.”
“I have emotional distance.”
“Coward.”
“Yes.”
He paused.
“Was it the bag?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
“Same number?”
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
Monica leaned against the building.
“It was in Beaumont’s house.”
Andre cursed.
Loudly.
She moved the phone away.
“Done?”
“No.”
He continued.
Then:
“Mom was right.”
Monica looked toward traffic.
“Yes.”
Three words.
The thing Denise had wanted when alive.
Not money.
Not spectacle.
Belief.
Monica closed her eyes.
“She knew.”
Andre’s voice softened.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“What does that mean?”
“She died knowing we never proved it.”
Andre went quiet.
Monica continued.
“We believed her.”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
He sounded hurt.
Monica regretted the word.
Then decided not to withdraw it.
“When we were kids, yes.”
“When we got older…”
She trailed off.
Andre finished.
“We thought maybe there was more.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Because there had been.
At twenty-three, Monica once asked Denise directly:
“Did you take the bag home accidentally?”
Her mother went so still that Monica remembered the silence better than the answer.
“No.”
“Did somebody ask you to move it?”
“No.”
“Did you know where it went?”
“No.”
Then Denise looked at her daughter.
“You want me to give you a version that makes their story reasonable.”
Monica denied it.
Denise shook her head.
“Sometimes there is no missing piece.”
“Sometimes somebody decides your anger looks more suspicious than their mistake.”
Monica had thought the sentence dramatic.
Now she stood outside the same company twenty-seven years later with proof in her handbag.
Andre said quietly:
“I asked her once too.”
Monica closed her eyes.
“What?”
“Before she died.”
“When?”
“Hospital.”
“You never told me.”
“She was sleeping most of the time.”
“What did you ask?”
Andre’s voice changed.
“I asked if there was anything about Bellavance she wanted me to know.”
Monica waited.
“She said, ‘I already told you.’”
That was Denise.
“Then?”
“Nothing.”
“That's it?”
“She told me to water her plant.”
Monica laughed through tears.
“The plant died.”
“I know.”
“You killed Mom’s plant.”
“She died first.”
“That defense is terrible.”
They laughed.
Good.
Then Andre asked:
“What happens now?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you sue?”
“Probably not.”
“Why?”
“Twenty-seven years.”
“Dead witnesses.”
“Expired claims.”
“Also they found it themselves.”