Ethan’s voice went sharp and small at the same time. “You’re taking me away?”
“Somewhere you won’t ask questions,” Ryan said.
“I want to stay with my mom!”
“Your mom doesn’t decide anything anymore.”
“Yes, she does.” Ethan’s voice steadied into something that made Emily want to cry. “She told me if something ever happened to her, I should call Ms. Parker.”
The silence that fell was a different kind of silence than the ones before it.
The Name That Stopped Everyone in the Room Cold
Ms. Parker.
Emily’s attorney.
The only person who knew that two weeks before the accident, Emily had quietly changed her will.
She had done it carefully and without telling Ryan. She had sat in Ms. Parker’s office on a Tuesday afternoon with the specific calm of a woman who has finally understood something she had been trying not to understand for a very long time. She had placed everything she owned into a trust for Ethan. She had left instructions. If anything happened to her, neither Ryan nor Claire was to have access to her son.
She had not told anyone.
She had not told her sister. She had not told her husband. She had not told her friends.
She had told one person.
And she had told her nine-year-old son that if something ever happened to her, he should call that name.
Ryan locked the door.
“What lawyer, Ethan?”
Claire’s hand froze on Emily’s arm.
