“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
I studied his face.
Then something occurred to me.
“Who was the person holding the other phone across the table?”
Tyler blinked.
“What?”
“In my memory, someone had a phone pointed at me.”
His expression changed.
Slowly.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“That wasn’t Mom’s phone.”
“Whose was it?”
Tyler looked toward the hallway.
Rose was standing there.
Holding her breath.
I stared at her.
Then at Tyler.
Then back at Rose.
“No.”
Rose gave me the most guilty smile I had ever seen.
“I’m afraid so.”
My mouth fell open.
“You were there?”
“Not in the dining room.”
“Then—”
“I was outside.”
Nothing made sense.
Rose sat opposite me.
“Richard’s letter had instructed Miriam to contact me if Mark ever began asking about your competence or finances.”
I turned toward Miriam.
She lifted both hands.
“Attorney-client instructions.”
Rose continued.
“Miriam called me two weeks before your birthday.”
“Two weeks?”
“We didn’t know enough to accuse anyone.”
“So you were watching me?”
“We were watching Mark.”
I stared at Tyler.
He gave a tiny nod.
“I emailed Miriam after I found the folder.”
Everything snapped into place.
The flash drive.
The photographs.
Tyler’s decision to speak.
The mysterious phone.
“What was the phone?”
Rose smiled nervously.
“A small camera against the dining-room window.”
“You recorded the entire birthday?”
“Yes.”
“And when Mark said ‘Tyler, don’t’?”
“Recorded.”
“When Lisa admitted—”
“Recorded.”
“When Mark admitted the loan—”
“Recorded.”
I stared at all three of them.
“You set a trap in my house.”
Miriam answered carefully.
“Tyler created the opportunity. Rose documented it. I advised them not to provoke anything dangerous.”
“And nobody thought to tell me?”
Tyler whispered,
“We were trying to protect you.”
I looked at him.
There were those words again.
Protect you.
The same words Mark had used.
The difference was enormous.
But so was the lesson.
