Vanessa laughed too quickly.
“Nobody took anything.”
My attorney turned toward her.
“Then where did the information come from?”
Vanessa looked at Grant.
That look answered more than anything she could have said.
Grant saw it too.
“Don’t,” he warned.
Vanessa’s face changed.
“Don’t what?”
“Get dragged into Anna’s performance.”
A minute earlier, she had been sitting beside him like a woman already auditioning for my place in the family.
Now he spoke to her like a liability.
I returned to my chair but did not sit.
“Open the book,” I said.
Vanessa held it against her chest.
“No.”
Evelyn finally spoke.
“Anna, enough.
You’ve turned an attempt at accountability into some legal spectacle.”
I looked at her.
“May 19.”
Her jaw tightened.
“What about it?”
“You remember the lunch Vanessa described?”
“Of course.”
“I miscarried that morning.”
Silence spread across the room.
One of Grant’s sisters lowered her eyes.
Evelyn’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Grant stared at me as though I had violated some agreement by saying it aloud.
I continued.
“I went to lunch because I was afraid to be alone.
You asked why I looked pale.
I told you I had a medical issue and didn’t want to discuss it.
I cried in the bathroom.
Apparently that became one of my failures.”
Evelyn looked toward Grant.
“Did you know?”
He did not answer.
That was answer enough.
Vanessa slowly lowered the book.
“You told me she cried because you canceled a vacation,” she said to him.
Grant’s eyes hardened.
“This is exactly what she does.
She changes the context after the fact.”
My attorney opened the sealed folder.
“No,” she said.
“Context is actually why I’m here.”
Grant moved toward her.
I stepped between them.
He stopped.
For years, Grant had relied on me moving first.
Moving away.
Moving aside.
Moving into another room before arguments became uglier.
