His eyes brightened so quickly that nausea rose in my throat.
“That’s exactly what I was going to suggest,” he said. “Clara and I had everything shared. It just feels right.”
“Clara left me some investments,” I added in a casual tone. “The lawyer mentioned them last month. Nothing huge. Maybe forty thousand.”
It was a lie.
But I needed to watch his reaction.
He chewed slowly, smiling.
“Well,” he said. “We can put that toward the house. Make it ours.”
There it was.
—
Over the next two days, I made phone calls whenever Michael was away.
Every debt listed by Clara was real.
Then I contacted the elderly lawyer.
“She wanted you to have options,” the lawyer told me over the phone. “Not just proof. Witnesses too.”
“Can you come to a dinner Sunday evening?” I asked.
“I already cleared my schedule,” he said. “Your sister anticipated this.”
Naturally,