“Rose? Absolutely.”
“Did she actually care about me?”
Paul fell completely silent.
Eventually he replied, “I genuinely believe she did. But I also believe that pure fear and financial reliance turned people into cowards when they should have done the right thing.”
I walked out with duplicates of all the paperwork and drove straight over to Mary’s place.
I raised the heavy folder in the air. “You need to explain everything right now.”
We sat down together at her dining table.
She explained that Jane was her eldest child. Jane had wed a guy the rest of our relatives despised. He perished in a collision before I even arrived. Jane passed away six weeks after delivering me, supposedly due to medical issues. Mary never bought that official excuse. Jane had lived in absolute terror before her death. She constantly claimed her greedy uncle was trying to steal the estate money.
“I placed you in a home where I believed I could keep a close eye on you.”
“Did Rose willingly go along with it?”
Heavy tears welled up in her eyes.
