“I panicked,” she answered.
“You could have called me.”
“I know.”
She had trusted Graham’s threats more than she trusted the person she married.
That decision reached backward into every time she told me I was paranoid about her late nights.
Graham suddenly said the young woman was not Lucinda at all.
Evelyn asked him to repeat the claim in writing.
He said nothing.
My phone buzzed with a message from my sister asking whether I was coming to dinner.
I typed that I would call later and turned the screen face down.
For one night, I needed to stop pretending I had any ordinary appointments left.
CHAPTER 6: WHAT EVELYN DID NOT SAY
Evelyn did not ask the police to arrest her husband in my kitchen.
She called her attorney, who instructed everyone to preserve their messages and avoid confronting Lucy without her consent.
The attorney wanted to speak with the proper authorities about the falsified death notice and the financial guardianship arrangements.
He also warned that several separate legal questions could not be resolved by one dramatic accusation.
I appreciated that caution.
Graham seemed to hate it.
He kept demanding to know who had given Evelyn access to internal records.
Nobody answered.
After a long silence, Evelyn said there was one thing she had not told me.
“I received a call this morning from a woman who used to work for Graham,” she said.
The caller had described a storage room at the company’s original office, where paper records from an old settlement had been retained even after the digital archive was moved.
She believed an unopened envelope in that room held letters Lucinda had written during the first year of her disappearance.
Graham denied that the room existed.
Natalie said she had carried a box there just two weeks earlier.
The contradiction settled over the table.
I asked why Evelyn had come to my house rather than directly to the office.
“Because I thought Natalie might destroy what she was hiding,” Evelyn replied.
My wife flinched.
Evelyn softened her voice.
“I wanted to give her one chance to hand it over.”
Natalie rose and walked toward the coat closet.
For a moment I thought she was leaving.
Instead, she took a padded envelope from the pocket of a rain jacket I had never seen before.
Inside were photocopies of correspondence, a red plastic access badge, and a small silver key.
She laid everything in front of Evelyn.
“I was going to leave these at your office tomorrow,” Natalie said.
