Carol Reyes was Denise's mother, Lily's grandmother. The woman had all but vanished from their lives after the funeral. Not because of any single fight, but because grief takes people different ways, and Carol's way had been to blame quietly, then less quietly the world, the hospital, the timing, and eventually unfairly. Marcus himself, as if there had been something he could have done, some vigilance he could have kept that would have changed a thing that could not be changed. She'd stopped calling.
Then she'd stopped answering when he called. For 4 years, the only contact had been a birthday card to Lily each year signed, "Grandma Carol, no note, no return address." "Is Carol okay?" Marcus asked, though something in the lawyer's voice already told him the answer. I'm very sorry to tell you that Mrs. Reyes passed away 11 days ago. It was sudden, a heart condition she'd apparently been managing privately. Marcus closed his eyes.
Hi hadn't spoken to the woman in years. She'd spent those years believing something cruel and untrue about him. And still sitting at his desk with the phone against his ear. He felt the loss of her because she was Denise's mother, because she was Lily's grandmother, because she was a thread back to a woman he'd loved. And now that thread was cut too.
I'm sorry to hear that, he said and meant it. Mr. Williams, there's a reason I'm calling beyond informing you. The lawyer's voice shifted became more careful. Mrs. Reyes left a will and there are provisions in it regarding your daughter Lily. What kind of provisions?
She left a significant sum in trust for Lily's education and care. That part is straightforward. A pause. But there's another element that's less straightforward, and I think it's best we discuss it in person. Are you able to come to my office this week?
Marcus' grip tightened on the phone. You can tell me now. The lawyer hesitated. Mrs. Reyes also included a letter and a request. She requested that upon her death, you be informed of something she chose not to share while she was living.
Another pause. Mr. Williams, are you aware that Denise had a sister? The floor of Marcus's stomach dropped. "No," he said slowly. "Denise was an only child." "She told me she was an only child.
She believed she was," the lawyer said gently. "Mrs. Reyes gave a child up for adoption 2 years before Denise was born, a daughter." Denise never knew. Mrs. Reyes never told her, but she left instructions that after her death, this information should be shared and that a certain person should be given the opportunity to know Lily because that person, Mr. Williams, is Lily's aunt, her blood aunt, and Mrs. Reyes spent the last year of her life in contact with her. Marcus sat very still at his desk while the fluorescent lights hummed above him and the ordinary noise of the warehouse floor carried on outside his office door. And he tried to make the words fit into a shape he could understand.
Denise had a sister. Lily had an aunt, a stranger connected by blood to his daughter, connected to the wife he'd lost, existing this whole time somewhere out in the world. and Carol had known and had kept it hidden and had chosen a lawyer and a will as the vehicle to finally set it loose from beyond a grave into the middle of the first steady thing Marcus had built in 4 years. "Mr. Williams, are you there? I'm here," he said. His voice came out rougher than he intended.
"This person, Denise's sister, does she what does she want?" "She wants to meet Lily," the lawyer said. "That's all she said she wants. But Mr. Williams. I should be honest with you. The trust Mrs. Rey has established the money for Lily.
It names this woman as a co-rustee, which means legally she has a voice in decisions about Lily's care and upbringing. I know that's a great deal to absorb over the phone. It was It was a great deal. Marcus thanked the lawyer, wrote down the appointment time, hung up the phone, and sat in his office chair without moving for a full four minutes. Then he called Emma.
She answered on the second ring. Hey, you. I was just Emma. His voice stopped her cold. Are you home?
I Yes. What's wrong, Marcus? What happened? I need to talk to you tonight after Lily's asleep. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand.
Denise's mother died and she left something behind. And I don't I need to think out loud with somebody, and you're the person I want to think out loud with. There was a pause on the line, and in that pause, Marcus heard something he'd been too preoccupied to notice. He needed the sound of someone rearranging their evening for him without being asked. "I'll be there," Emma said.
"The second she's down, I'll be there. Whatever it is, Marcus, you're not thinking about it alone." He got Lily to bed at 8:45. Read her two chapters, kissed her forehead, stood in the doorway the way he always did, and she was asleep. one arm around Biscuit, one around Detective's fishbowl, which she had insisted on keeping on the nightstand, and Marcus looked at her small sleeping face and felt a fear he hadn't felt since the earliest days. The fear of a threat he couldn't fix with his hands. Emma knocked softly at 9.
He let her in. She took one look at his face and didn't say anything. Just came in and sat down beside him on the couch and waited. He told her everything. the lawyer, Carol's death, the sister nobody knew existed, the trust, the money, the co-rustee, the woman out there somewhere who shared Lily's blood and now apparently shared a legal say in her life. Emma listened to all of it without interrupting.
When he finished, she was quiet for a moment. "How do you feel?" she asked. "Not what should we do, not here's what I think. How do you feel?" She'd asked him the same kind of question on the bridge and Marcus realized it was maybe the thing he loved most about her that she started with the feeling always before the fixing. Scared, he admitted.
I feel scared. I built this US lily this whole steady thing and it took 4 years and it's the first time I felt like the ground was solid and now there's this person who has a legal claim to a piece of my daughter and I don't know who she is and I don't know what she wants and I can't protect Lily from something I can't even see yet. He looked at Emma. That's the part that's killing me. I can't see it.