The Women Patricia Buried
Chapter 09 - The Women Patricia Buried
Patricia did not scream.
That was not her style.
She went quiet, which was how she had always entered battle. The softer her voice, the more carefully Claire watched her hands.
“Marissa,” Patricia said. “You poor thing.”
Marissa laughed once. “Don’t.”
Conrad turned toward Patricia with the fury of a man realizing a partner had overplayed the hand. “You told me she was unreachable.”
“She was.” Patricia’s eyes never left the recorder. “Until someone decided to drag her into a family dispute she cannot possibly understand.”
Harrison walked up the path. “I called her.”
Patricia looked as if he had struck her, though no one had moved.
“You did what?”
“I called the number in Dad’s old address book.”
Claire stared at him. “Your father knew where Marissa was?”
Harrison swallowed. “I found the address book after he died. Mom told me not to bother with anything in it.”
Patricia’s face hardened. “Because your father collected lost causes.”
Marissa stepped forward. “He visited me once.”
That silenced everyone.
Even Conrad turned.
Marissa looked at Harrison. “Your father came to the facility after my son died. He apologized.”
“For what?” Harrison asked.
“For letting Patricia use his name.”
Harrison looked at his mother as if the woman who raised him had just shifted shape in front of him.
Patricia lifted her chin. “Your father was weak.”
“No,” Evelyn said from the doorway. “He was dying.”
Patricia’s gaze snapped to her.
Evelyn smiled slightly. “Hello, Patricia.”
The greeting was polite enough to sound Southern and cold enough to be a warning.
Patricia’s hand tightened around the folder. “Evelyn Price. Still making a living off dead women’s paranoia?”
“Mostly off living women’s evidence.”
Claire had never loved an attorney before. She came close then.
Evelyn held out her hand. “The folder, Patricia.”
“I don’t think so.”
The police cruiser that had followed Harrison turned onto Ruby’s street then. Evelyn had called them before anyone knew they would be needed. Claire was learning to appreciate professionals.
Patricia saw the cruiser and made a quick calculation.
Claire recognized it because she had watched that calculation happen a hundred times: at dinner parties, in boardrooms, beside hospital beds. Patricia’s mind moved toward the version of events most likely to keep her clean.
She turned to Claire.
“Everything I did,” Patricia said, voice low, “was to protect my family.”
Claire looked at Harrison. “Did that ever include me?”
For the first time, Patricia had no immediate answer.
That was answer enough.
The officers approached. Statements began. Names were taken. The recorder was placed in an evidence bag. Ruby cried once when asked to confirm the voicemail threat, then straightened and repeated every word clearly.
Marissa sat on the porch steps with her hands clasped between her knees. Harrison stood near her, not touching, not asking comfort, looking like a man finally seeing the wreckage after years of admiring the wallpaper.
Claire kept thinking of Lily coloring purple dogs.
Every decision narrowed to that child.
Evelyn pulled Claire aside. “This helps us. A lot.”
“Enough?”
“For custody? Almost certainly. For financial fraud? It opens the door. But Patricia still has the original ledger.”
Claire glanced at the folder under Patricia’s arm.
“She brought it.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “That is bait.”
Claire looked again.
Patricia held the folder too visibly. Too tightly. She wanted everyone aware of it.
“Then where is the real one?” Claire asked.
Evelyn’s eyes moved toward Harrison.
Harrison saw them looking and came over slowly.
“I know,” he said.
Patricia spun. “Harrison.”
He flinched at her tone.
Then, for once, he did not obey it.
“The lake house,” he said. “But not the master bedroom. Dad built a floor safe under the pantry. Mom forgot I saw it when I was twelve.”
Patricia’s face went blank.
That frightened Claire more than her anger.
Conrad spoke from beside his car. “If that ledger leaves the house, none of you can control what happens next.”
Evelyn looked at him. “That is generally the point of evidence.”
He ignored her. His eyes fixed on Claire. “You think you’re reclaiming your life. You are stepping into business you do not understand.”
“I understand enough to know you’re scared.”
His smile returned. “Of you?”
“No,” Claire said. “Of my grandmother.”
The smile vanished.
There it was. The nerve beneath the skin.
Margaret Monroe had been dead three years, and still powerful men reacted to her name like she might walk in holding receipts.
Evelyn noticed too.
Claire turned to Patricia. “What did my grandmother know?”
Patricia’s mouth curved. “Enough to die at a convenient time.”
The street went silent.
Harrison whispered, “Mom.”
Patricia blinked, as if realizing too late that she had spoken aloud.
Evelyn’s face changed entirely.
Not shock.
Focus.
“Officer,” she said, “I want that statement noted.”
Patricia looked at Claire, and for one instant the mask slipped.
Beneath it was not elegance, not outrage, not wounded pride.
It was hatred.
Pure and old.
“You think Margaret loved you?” Patricia said. “She used you the same way everyone uses women like us.”
Claire stepped closer. “Women like us?”
Patricia’s laugh was dry. “Born near money, never inside it. Pretty enough to be invited, foolish enough to believe invitation means belonging.”
It was the first honest thing Claire had ever heard her say.
Then Patricia ruined it.
“I just learned faster than you did.”
An officer asked Patricia to come to the cruiser for further questioning. She went with her head high, but Claire saw the tremor in her fingers.
As they guided her away, Patricia looked back at Harrison.
“If you give them that ledger,” she said, “you will find out what your father really did.”
Harrison went still.
The officer closed the cruiser door.
Claire watched Harrison’s face change.
“What did she mean?” she asked.
He did not answer.
Marissa stood from the porch steps, pale and shaking.
“I know,” she said.
Everyone turned to her.
Marissa looked at Harrison with sorrow.
May you like
“Your father was not protecting me from Conrad,” she said. “He was paying Patricia to keep me quiet.”
And for the first time all morning, Harrison looked like he might rather be lied to again.
