Chapter 5
The next morning, I reported what had happened.
Tasha held Hope while I sat in a small interview room with an investigator named Lena Brooks.
She asked careful questions.
What had I signed?
When had Nia visited?
Who had access to my mail?
I answered what I knew.
When I did not remember something, I said so.
Grief had left holes in those weeks. I refused to fill them with guesses just because I wanted someone punished.
Lena took copies of the messages.
She asked whether Nia had threatened me before.
“Not directly.”
“What did she do indirectly?”
I thought about the wedding.
The way she knew about my unpaid rent before I mentioned it.
The way she told me Marcus was tired of hearing from me.
“She made me believe nobody wanted to help.”
Lena wrote that down.
When I came out, Marcus stood from a chair near the entrance.
He had waited without joining the interview.
Simone had explained that our accounts needed to remain our own.
I liked him better for respecting that.
Hope was awake in Tasha’s arms.
I took her and kissed the soft place above her eyebrow.
“Mommy’s here.”
Marcus looked away.
I knew why.
Eli used to say those same words into my stomach, except he said Daddy.
At home, I found Celeste waiting beside the building entrance.
I stopped walking.
She wore sunglasses despite the cloudy sky.
“Maya, please.”
Marcus moved toward me, but I raised my hand.
I wanted to hear her myself.
Celeste looked at Hope.
“May I see her?”
I held my daughter close.
“You can look.”
That hurt her.
I could see it.
I did not apologize.
She pulled off her sunglasses.
“I didn’t know about the money.”
“What did you know?”
She swallowed.
“Nia said Marcus was helping you. She said you kept asking for more.”
My breath caught.
“And you believed her.”
“I should have called you.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled.
“I was grieving.”
“So was I.”
The words came out sharper than I intended.
But I did not take them back.
“I buried your son,” I said. “I carried his child. You stopped answering because somebody told you I was expensive.”
Celeste put one hand against the wall.
Marcus stayed silent.
That mattered too.
He did not ask me to be gentle because she was his mother.
“I thought money was making things uncomfortable,” she whispered.
“You let me believe my daughter had lost two families.”
She started crying.
I could have comforted her.
The old version of me would have.
Instead, I shifted Hope to my other arm.
“If you want to be her grandmother, you need to stop accepting stories about me from people who dislike me.”
“I will.”
“I need more than a promise.”
She nodded.
“I understand.”
I was not certain she did.
But I let her walk upstairs with us.
She sat across from me and looked at Hope for nearly ten minutes before asking about her birth.
I told her the parts I could say without breaking.
The emergency admission.
The nurse who stayed when my labor moved too quickly.
Tasha arriving just before Hope was born.
The moment I reached for my husband and remembered.
Celeste covered her mouth.
“I should have been there.”
“Yes.”
This time, she did not argue with the answer.
Before she left, she put an envelope on the table.
I stared at it.
“What is that?”
“A letter. Not money.”
She looked at Marcus.
“I wrote down everything Nia told me. Dates, as closely as I could remember. Simone can decide whether it helps.”
It was the first useful thing she had done since Eli died.
I thanked her.
I did not forgive her yet.
That afternoon, the housing lawyer reached an agreement with my landlord. Marcus paid the overdue rent directly with my permission, and the landlord stopped the filing process.
I signed a simple document stating the payment was a gift.
I needed the boundary.
Marcus understood.
For one evening, I thought the crisis might stop growing.
Then Simone called.
The records showed that part of the insurance payment had moved from Nia’s account into Denise’s event business.
The same business had billed Marcus separately for wedding services.
I listened while Hope slept against me.
“So his money and mine paid for the same things?”
“Some invoices appear to overlap,” Simone said. “An accountant is reviewing them.”
I closed my eyes.
Nia had not simply stolen from a widow.
She had made Marcus pay to stand beneath the decorations bought with his brother’s death.
My phone buzzed during the call.
An email from Denise.
The subject line read:
A reasonable family settlement.
I opened it.
She offered to return a portion of the money if I signed a statement saying the transfers had been gifts.
May you like
At the bottom, one sentence made my whole body tighten.
For everyone’s sake, please consider what this publicity could do to Hope.
