Chapter 13 - Claire’s Deal
Claire accepted a plea agreement.
People online would later call her a coward.
Maybe.
I called it evidence.
She admitted falsifying records.
Helping transfer my house.
Moving money through Crown Meridian.
Lying to auditors.
She denied knowing about the terrace plan before it happened.
The phone records supported her.
She had asked Adrian:
What did you do?
Minutes after my fall.
She also turned over voice memos.
In one, Adrian told her:
“When Hannah is gone, we start over.”
Claire replied:
“Gone where?”
Adrian laughed.
“You ask too many questions.”
A month before the fall.
Not proof alone.
Powerful with everything else.
Claire visited me once.
With attorneys.
No private forgiveness scene.
No tears as currency.
She sat across the hospital room.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at her.
“For which part?”
“The affair.”
“The deed?”
“Yes.”
“The money?”
“Yes.”
“The lies?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She looked confused.
“Good?”
“You know what you’re admitting.”
She cried then.
“I thought he loved me.”
I believed her.
That changed nothing.
“I thought he loved me too.”
For one second we were two women looking at the same man from different wreckage.
Then I said:
“You still chose to help him steal from me.”
“I know.”
That was enough.
She signed the cooperation statement.
Before leaving she stopped.
“Vivian hated you because you could read the books.”
I almost laughed.
“No.”
Claire looked back.
“She hated you because Adrian listened to you until the money got bad.”
That landed differently.
Vivian had spent years making me feel like an outsider.
Maybe because I was the one person in the family who could see the structure underneath their image.
Then Claire added:
“There’s another account.”
Marcus straightened.
“What account?”
Claire swallowed.
“Not Crown Meridian.”
“Name?”
“Blue Harbor Trust.”
I closed my eyes.
May you like
Of course there was another account.
And this one, Claire said, was in my name.
