“Peter told me Mom had personally approved everything.”
“Maybe she approved your four hundred thousand,” Claire
said. “Just not the other amount.”
That possibility changed the emotional weight of the room.
Perhaps Anne had helped Daniel after all.
Perhaps the lie had been added around a truth.
Those were often the hardest deceptions to untangle.
“Do we have anything written by Anne about Daniel’s loan?” I asked.
Claire shook her head.
“I haven’t found anything.”
Harrison looked up suddenly.
“I may know where to look.”
We all turned toward him.
“Mrs. Bennett kept personal trust correspondence separately from legal files.”
“Where?”
“In the morning room.”
Claire
frowned.
“We cleared the morning room after Mom died.”
“Not the desk.”
“The desk is still there.”
“No. Inside the desk.”
I stood.
The morning room had been Anne’s favorite space.
It faced the eastern garden and caught the earliest sunlight. She drank coffee there, wrote letters there, read there.
