Chapter 3 - THE PAGE DATED NOVEMBER THIRD
Nora Finch refused to meet at the hotel, and Khloe did not blame her. Instead they agreed to speak in Miriam Ellis's office the following afternoon, with Nora's lawyer present if she wanted one. Khloe spent the intervening hours staring at the ceiling, remembering every time Liam had tried to tell her something while Patricia interrupted to adjust his medication.
November third had been a Monday. She remembered because it was the day she bought the yellow chrysanthemums Liam said reminded him of their first apartment. He had smiled when she placed them beside his bed. He'd been alert enough to complain that Patricia kept opening his mail. Then his expression had changed and he'd asked her to check the blue notebook.
She had thought he meant the page where he was tracking his pain levels. By the time she retrieved it, Patricia had arrived with the night nurse and told her Liam needed rest. Khloe had left the notebook on his bedside table. The memory now felt like a door she had walked past without realizing it was unlocked.
At ten the next morning, Roman called to ask how she was. Khloe almost told him nothing. Then she decided secrecy was how the Davenports had controlled her marriage and that she could choose her own boundaries without imitating them.
"I heard from Nora," she said. "I'm meeting her with Miriam."
"Do you want anyone there?"
"My lawyer. That's enough."
"All right."
She waited for him to insist. He didn't. "Do you know why Alden Pryce's sister runs a rehabilitation clinic?"
"Her name is Celeste Pryce. She used to manage claims for a group of private insurers. Her company buys distressed facilities and bills for specialized care."
"Do you think she hurt Liam?"
"I think suspicion isn't evidence. I also think you should make sure the records cannot disappear."
"Miriam is working on it."
"Good." A pause. "Khloe, I'm sorry about your husband. I haven't said that properly."
The words landed unexpectedly. Almost everyone had said Liam was at peace, that time would heal, that she needed to be strong. Roman had simply named what happened.
"Thank you," she said.
At Miriam's office, Nora arrived in a plain navy coat, carrying a canvas tote and looking at the stairs behind her every time they creaked. She was thirty-eight, with close-cropped dark hair and an old scar beside her mouth. She did not sit until Miriam explained the meeting was voluntary and Khloe would not record her without permission.
"I should have called earlier," Nora said. "I was afraid."
"Of Patricia?" Khloe asked.
"Of what Patricia could do through other people." Nora looked at Miriam. "I kept copies of my clinical notes. I know I'm not supposed to remove patient records, but I believed the originals were being altered. My lawyer has advised me how to handle them."
Miriam nodded. "We'll use the proper procedure for producing them. You can tell us what you personally observed."
Nora described Liam's recovery after the bridge accident. His spinal injury had been serious, but the worst of his cognitive problems appeared after a medication change. He sometimes became disoriented, then recovered his clarity when doses were delayed. Nora had flagged those episodes to the supervising physician. Her concerns were dismissed as emotional responses to chronic pain.
"He also asked for a second opinion," Nora said. "I wrote it down. The next day my access badge stopped working."
Khloe gripped the edge of her chair. "Patricia told me you resigned."
"I was fired by a letter that accused me of violating boundaries. No hearing. No meeting. I tried to contact Liam, but the numbers I'd been given stopped connecting."
"November third," Khloe said. "What did he write?"
Nora took a slow breath. "He told me he was afraid he was being made less clearheaded so he'd sign things. I asked him to write down what he wanted while he could. He wrote that he did not authorize a transfer of the gallery reserve or any change to his will. He wanted you to receive a copy. He dated and initialed the page."
The gallery reserve. Khloe knew that phrase. Liam had created a small fund to help her reopen a gallery after she left her previous job. It wasn't a fortune compared with the Davenport estate. But it was hers in the only way Liam could make it hers: a promise backed by money he had set aside.
"Where is the page?" she asked.
"The original was in the blue notebook when I was dismissed. I have a dated photograph, taken at Liam's request, with a witness note from a nursing assistant."
Miriam asked for the assistant's name. Nora supplied it. Khloe watched the attorney write the details and felt the conversation become solid under her feet. They were not merely telling stories. They were identifying people, dates, and records that someone else could test.
"Did you see anything suggesting Liam's death was caused deliberately?" Miriam asked.
"I didn't attend his final week," Nora said. "I won't claim knowledge I don't have. I saw poor decisions and concerns dismissed. I saw paperwork prepared while he was confused. That is what I can testify about."
Khloe's eyes burned. She wanted an answer so definitive it would make grief simple. Nora was offering something harder: uncertainty with edges.
After the meeting, Miriam explained the options. They would seek preservation orders concerning the clinic's records, subpoena the original will, and ask a qualified specialist to review treatment decisions. Khloe could also pursue a complaint to the medical licensing authorities. None of these steps would bring Liam back. They could, perhaps, stop his final wishes from being rewritten by people who outlived him.
Khloe returned to the hotel by herself. She had told Roman she needed the afternoon alone. He had accepted that, though Enzo called once to confirm she had a safe way to travel. She told him she had a taxi receipt and would not report her movements to a man who wasn't her employer.
"Understood," Enzo said, a little stiffly.
There were fresh flowers in her hotel room when she entered. For a dreadful moment she thought Roman had sent them. Then she read the card. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, REMEMBER THE GALLERY. There was no signature. The flowers were yellow chrysanthemums.
Khloe set the vase down with shaking hands. The delivery clerk said the order had come from a neighborhood florist, paid in cash. Miriam arranged to preserve the card and ask whether footage existed. Khloe didn't know if the sender meant comfort or warning. She knew only that someone besides her remembered Liam's November third wish.
That evening Roman invited her to dinner at a quiet restaurant. She declined. He asked whether she wanted food delivered without his name on the order. She laughed despite herself, then said she could take care of her own dinner. He promised not to call again that night.
For the first time since the funeral, Khloe slept for three uninterrupted hours. She woke to rain at the window and a message from Miriam: the emergency preservation request had been filed. A judge would review it the next morning.
By nine, a process server had delivered formal notice to the Davenport estate. At nine seventeen, Patricia called Khloe fourteen times. Khloe did not answer. At nine twenty-three, Harrison left a voicemail accusing her of desecrating Liam's memory. At nine forty, Alden Pryce sent Miriam a polished letter saying all relevant documents were secure and nobody had altered any estate property.
Then Nora called again.
"The assistant who witnessed Liam write the page is missing," she said. "Her name is Beatrice Lane. She was supposed to meet your lawyer today. She didn't arrive for her shift."
Miriam instructed them not to assume a crime. They contacted the assistant's family through lawful channels and asked the clinic to preserve scheduling records. Khloe clung to that restraint because fear was turning everything into a threat.
Late that afternoon, she received a voicemail from a number associated with the old gallery reserve bank. A compliance officer needed to speak with her about a recent instruction submitted in her name. Khloe called the bank using its public number rather than the message's callback number.
The officer confirmed that someone had attempted to close the reserve account under a power of attorney dated the morning after Liam's death. Khloe had never signed it. The scanned signature on the instruction was not even hers; it was the broken, wavering imitation she had been practicing on the morning Liam first became seriously ill, when she was learning to sign documents with her left hand after a kitchen injury.
Only a handful of people had ever seen that practice sheet. She had left it in the Davenport study, tucked under Liam's medical papers.
Khloe asked the bank to freeze the instruction pending verification. Then she called Miriam and told her what she'd learned. As she spoke, the hotel room's door handle moved once, slowly, without a knock.
She stopped speaking.
Outside, a man whispered to someone she couldn't hear, "She's in there. Check the reservation again."
May you like
Khloe backed away from the door, phone still in her hand. The florist card lay beside the vase. On its back, where she hadn't looked before, someone had written a second sentence in faint pencil:
YOUR HUSBAND LEFT THE KEY WHERE YOU FIRST MET.
