I carried the damp envelope into the kitchen, the room where my father and I had shared a thousand quiet mornings, and I opened it while Delia’s car was still minutes away. His handwriting had grown thin near the end, but the words were unshaken. He wrote that he had known, in his final months, precisely what was happening around him. He had watched Colton grow close to Bennett. He had heard the whispered phone calls and noticed the way both men had started circling his estate as though it were already being divided. And he wanted me to know that whatever I heard at the reading tomorrow was not an accident. It had all been arranged.<\/p>\n
The final lines stopped my breath. “Whatever they claim I said in my last weeks, remember this. I recorded my true wishes with Delia ten months before I ever got sick, when my mind was clear and no one was watching. Trust her. Trust the roses.” I read it three times. Then the doorbell rang, and Delia stood on the porch with a leather folder pressed to her chest and a look on her face I had never seen there before. “Marguerite,” she said quietly, “before tomorrow, there’s something you need to know about what Colton and Vivienne have been planning. And it’s worse than you think.”<\/p>\n
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