“Why would she include my family?”
“I think the cottage was supposed to belong to both of you.”
I looked around the small room.
The lake moved beyond the window, gray and calm.
“Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
“Because they wanted to give it to you when you came back together.”
A laugh escaped me, though there was no humor in it.
“They planned our lives even after ruining them.”
Lucas sat on the edge of the desk.
“Maybe they were trying to repair what they had broken.”
“Repair requires telling the truth.”
“Yes.”
The cassette tape lay beneath the folders.
A handwritten label identified the date: December 21, 1986.
Lucas found an old player in a cabinet and inserted the tape. The machine clicked, hissed, and then a woman’s voice filled the room.
Douglas’s mother.
“I don’t know if anyone will ever hear this. I am making this recording because my husband says memory changes facts, and perhaps he is right. But I remember what happened.”
