Chapter 9 - Aunt Linda’s Message
I called Linda immediately.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
By the third call, I was angry enough to leave a message I would later regret.
“Call me now. If you told Mason I was coming yesterday, you need to explain why.”
Sophie sat across from me.
“You think Aunt Linda helped him?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
But my chest hurt.
Linda and I had spent sixty years alternating between loyalty and competition.
She was four years younger.
Daniel trusted her enough to name her successor trustee.
I trusted her enough to know where I kept the emergency documents.
There were things about my life only Linda knew.
Mason understood family fractures.
Maybe he had found another one.
Linda called eleven minutes later.
“What the hell is that message?”
“Did you tell Mason I was coming to Sophie’s house?”
“What?”
“Yesterday. Three fifteen.”
“No.”
“Did you tell Erica?”
“I haven’t spoken to Erica in months.”
Sophie leaned toward the speaker.
“Aunt Linda, did Mason contact you recently?”
Silence.
I closed my eyes.
“When?” I asked.
Linda sighed.
“Last week.”
“About what?”
“You.”
Of course.
“What did he say?”
“He was worried.”
“About?”
“He said you were becoming obsessive about Sophie’s pregnancy and the trust.”
Sophie shut her eyes.
“What did you tell him?”
“Not much.”
“What did you tell him, Linda?”
“Stop interrogating me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“He asked whether you were still angry about him and Sophie marrying quickly.”
“And?”
“I said yes.”
My jaw tightened.
“What else?”
“He asked whether you were coming over this week.”
Sophie whispered, “Oh God.”
Linda’s voice changed.
“I didn’t know anything was wrong.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you said you were stopping by Tuesday afternoon.”
“What time?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Linda.”
“Maybe around three.”
There it was.
I put both hands flat on the table.
“He knew.”
“Knew what?”
I explained enough.
Not everything.
The pot.
Ava.
The camera.
The calendar.
Linda stopped interrupting.
When I finished, she cried.
My sister was not a crier.
“Helen, I swear to God.”
“I believe you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Because I heard the horror in her voice.
And because Mason did not need accomplices when ordinary conversation gave him enough.
Linda had believed a worried husband.
That was all.
Margaret called her later and advised her not to speak with Mason again.
By evening, Linda was on a flight from Phoenix.
Sophie objected.
“I don’t need more people in this house.”
“She’s coming because she feels responsible.”
“She isn’t.”
“I know.”
Sophie looked at me.
“You didn’t say that about yourself.”
“What?”
“You keep acting like you should have stopped all this.”
I laughed quietly.
“Mothers specialize in impossible responsibility.”
“Maybe stop.”
It was the first gentle thing she had said to me in two days.
I nodded.
That night, Ava refused to settle.
Sophie walked her through the living room for nearly an hour.
I watched from the doorway.
“You want me to take a shift?”
“No.”
“You need sleep.”
“I said no.”
I stepped back.
Ten minutes later she appeared beside my chair.
“Actually, yes.”
I took Ava.
Sophie sat beside me.
For a while, we listened to the baby breathe.
Then she said, “He kept telling me you hated him because you couldn’t control me anymore.”
I looked down at Ava.
“I didn’t like him.”
“I know.”
“I thought he was too smooth.”
“You thought every man was too smooth.”
“True.”
Sophie almost smiled.
Then it disappeared.
“He used things that were real.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why I believed him.”
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“Were you trying to control me?”
Sometimes truth comes at terrible moments.
That does not make it less necessary.
“Yes.”
Sophie blinked.
I continued.
“After your father died, I was terrified. I thought if I could control enough details, I could prevent another disaster. I told myself it was love.”
Her eyes filled.
“Mason didn’t invent all of it.”
“No.”
“He just used it.”
“Yes.”
We sat in the dark with Ava between us.
Maybe that conversation saved us.
Not because it repaired everything.
Because Mason’s strongest weapon had always been the truth distorted slightly.
Once we started telling each other the undistorted version, he lost room to stand between us.
At eleven forty, Detective Cavanaugh called.
They had recovered part of the kitchen video.
My heart hammered.
“Does it show the pot?”
“Yes.”
“Ava?”
“Yes.”
Sophie took the phone from me.
“Does it show what Mason did?”
A pause.
“It shows him carrying Ava into the kitchen.”
“And?”
“It shows Erica entering behind him.”
“And?”
“The audio starts twenty-three seconds before Helen arrives.”
Sophie’s knuckles whitened around the phone.
“What do they say?”
Cavanaugh’s voice became quiet.
“Erica tells Mason, ‘This is too far.’”
Sophie stopped breathing.
May you like
Then Cavanaugh continued.
“And Mason answers, ‘It only has to look bad for thirty seconds.’”
