My Sister Called to Say Our Father Was Dead While He Sat Beside Me. By Sunset, the Funeral She Planned Had Become Her Trial..105

Dad nodded.

On the speaker, Simone said impatiently, “Claire? Are you still there?”

“Oh, I’m here.”

“Good. Then understand this clearly. Dad made his decision. Everything belongs to Marcus and me now.”

Marcus laughed.

“Finally.”

Dad stood.

He tightened the belt of his robe and walked around the table.

Simone continued talking about paperwork, funeral arrangements, property, accounts, and everything she believed she had inherited from a man currently standing beside me.

Then Dad bent toward the phone.

A cold, dangerous clarity flickered behind his eyes.

Marcus was still laughing when Dad leaned closer to the speaker and calmly said—

“Simone, before you renovate my kitchen, perhaps you should wait until I’m actually dead.”

The laughter stopped.

Not gradually.

It vanished so completely that the silence seemed to strike the walls.

For one second, the only sound was the engine still idling in the background.

Then Simone whispered, “What?”

Dad straightened.

“You heard me.”

The engine revved sharply.

Marcus said something too low for me to understand.

Simone’s breathing changed.

“Claire,” she said, “what are you doing?”

“I’m eating breakfast with Dad.”

“No.”

Dad looked down at the half-eaten strip of bacon in his hand.

“Yes,” he said. “And she’s being selfish about the bacon.”

I almost laughed.

Simone did not.

“That’s a recording,” she said.

Dad’s mouth hardened.

“A recording?”

“You’re trying to scare us.”

“Then let me say something a recording wouldn’t know.” Dad leaned closer. “The fake will is behind the false back panel of my bottom desk drawer, and the combination Marcus tried on my safe was your wedding anniversary followed by his birthday.”

On the other end of the line, something struck the floor.

Perhaps the phone.

Perhaps Simone’s certainty.

Marcus began swearing.

Dad continued.

“The real combination is Evelyn’s birthday. The fact that neither of you remembered your mother’s birthday tells me everything I need to know.”

“Thomas,” Marcus said suddenly.

The use of Dad’s first name transformed his voice.

The smugness was gone.

Something sharp and frightened had replaced it.

Dad’s eyes narrowed.

“Good morning, Marcus.”

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Then I suggest you explain what it looks like.”

“We came over because Simone was worried. The door was unlocked.”

“I have a camera showing you drilling through the lock at five twelve this morning.”

Simone gasped.

Marcus didn’t answer.

Dad’s voice became quieter.

“I also have a camera in my office.”

That was not entirely true.

There had been three cameras in the office.

One faced the desk.

One faced the safe.

The third was hidden inside the carved wooden clock above the bookcase—the same clock Simone had mocked for years because it ran four minutes slow.

Marcus had stood directly beneath it while explaining exactly how much easier everything would be once Dad was “officially out of the way.”

We already had the recording.

Marcus and Simone simply didn’t know it yet.

Dad let the silence stretch.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “Do not remove anything from my house. Do not touch my accounts. Do not enter my truck. And do not destroy one piece of paper.”

Simone found her voice.

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand more than you think.”

“Dad, please.”

It was the first time she had called him Dad that morning.

Dad heard it too.

A flicker of pain crossed his face, but it disappeared almost immediately.

“Where are you?” Simone asked.

Dad ignored the question.

“Is Everett with you?”

Another pause.

“No.”

The answer came too fast.

Dad’s head lifted.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Simone.”

“I said I don’t know.”