Sarah handed Pauline to me. The baby was warm and impossibly small, her dark hair lying in soft wisps against her head. Holding her steadied me enough to ask the question that mattered most.
“Where have you been?”
“Safe, mostly. I stayed in cheap rooms at first. Then I found Bella. I have been living with her for several months.”
Sarah placed a thick manila folder on the coffee table.
“This began with Grandpa’s money,” she said.
While I had been away on another business trip, a bank notice addressed to the trust had arrived at the house. Sarah opened it because the account was meant for her education. The balance was far lower than it should have been.
She confronted Kevin.
“He did not deny it,” Sarah told me. “He said you would believe him over me. Then he said that if I told you, he would call your employer and ruin your career. He claimed he knew someone on the firm’s board. He said he would take the house, empty the accounts, and make sure you blamed me for losing everything.”
I pressed Pauline closer, not from fear of dropping her but because I needed something real to hold.
“Why did you believe him?”
Sarah’s eyes filled, though her voice stayed controlled. “Because you always looked frightened when he talked about money. Because he had spent years proving that he could make all of us smaller.”
The truth hurt because it was fair.
