Chapter 13 - David's Version of the Truth)
They met through thick glass at the county detention center.
Margaret sat in her wheelchair.
Paul waited outside.
Detective Ruiz observed from another room.
David entered wearing jail clothes.
Without his plaid shirts, work boots, keys, trucks, paperwork, and constant movement, he looked smaller.
Still dangerous.
But smaller.
He picked up the phone.
Margaret did the same.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then David smiled.
"You look tired."
Margaret nearly laughed.
Even here, he wanted control of the first sentence.
"You said you had information about your father."
His smile faded.
"No hello?"
"No."
"I'm still your son."
"Then speak like one."
David's eyes narrowed.
"There she is."
Margaret waited.
Finally he leaned closer to the glass.
"Dad wasn't supposed to die."
She said nothing.
"I only wanted him weak."
Nothing.
"He was going to destroy everything."
"What did he destroy?"
"My future."
"You stole from him."
"I built that company too."
"You stole from it."
"He was giving it to Paul."
"No. He was protecting it from you."
David slammed his hand against the table.
"He always chose Paul."
Margaret didn't flinch.
"He chose the son who wasn't poisoning him."
David stared at her.
Then laughed.
"You've been talking to Paul too much."
"Twenty-seven years too little."
"He ran."
"You stabbed him."
"He attacked me."
"You buried him alive."
David paused.
There it was.
The smallest silence.
An admission without words.
Margaret continued.
"You killed Rachel."
David's expression remained blank.
"Nathan talks too much."
"Did you love her?"
His face changed slightly.
"Once."
"What happened?"
"She was going to leave."
Margaret felt sick.
"So you killed her?"
"I didn't mean to."
"Did you mean to bury her in concrete?"
David's jaw tightened.
Margaret stared at him.
"For most of my life I wondered where I failed you."
David scoffed.
"Here we go."
"I thought perhaps Arthur was too hard on you."
"He was."
"I thought perhaps I favored Paul."
"You did."
"I thought perhaps Mark irritated you."
"He did."
Margaret nodded slowly.
"I spent decades arranging everyone else's behavior around your cruelty."
David's face hardened.
"And now?"
"Now I understand there was no arrangement that would have made you good."
He leaned toward the glass.
"You think Paul is good?"
"This isn't about Paul."
"Mark?"
"No."
"Arthur?"
"No."
"Everyone has dirt."
"Yes."
Margaret's voice remained calm.
"But most people don't bury human beings because they inconvenience them."
David looked away.
Margaret waited.
He finally said, "Dad called me into the basement."
"When?"
"The morning he went to the hospital."
"What happened?"
"He showed me the lab results."
"The digoxin."
"Yes."
"He knew."
"Yes."
"Did you give him the extra medication?"
David stared at her.
Margaret held his gaze.
Finally he said, "I changed the bottles."
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
"Why?"
"To make him confused."
"Not to kill him?"
"No."
"You expected a sixty-one-year-old heart patient to survive repeated toxic doses?"
"He wasn't supposed to take that much."
"You changed the bottle."
"He kept taking it."
Margaret almost dropped the receiver.
For a moment she could not comprehend the moral emptiness of the sentence.
He kept taking it.
As if Arthur had poisoned himself by trusting the label on his own prescription.
David continued.
"When he collapsed, I called the ambulance."
"How generous."
"He was alive at the hospital."
"You told me he wasn't."
"I needed time."
"For what?"
"To find Paul's copies."
"And when you couldn't?"
David smiled slightly.
"Paul came looking for them."
Margaret closed her eyes.
"So you stabbed him."
"He wouldn't hand them over."
"And Mark?"
"Mark did what he always did."
"What you told him."
"Exactly."
Margaret looked at him.
"You sound proud."
"I'm realistic."
"No."
She leaned closer.
"You are a coward who mistook fear for loyalty."
David's face turned red.
"You came here for Dad's final hour."
"Yes."
"He asked for you."
Margaret stopped breathing.
"What?"
"At the hospital."
"You said he never woke."
"He woke."
"What did he say?"
David watched her carefully.
"He wanted you."
Margaret's eyes filled.
"And?"
"I told the nurse you were sedated."
"Was I?"
"Yes."
"Because you gave me something?"
David did not answer.
"You drugged me."
"You were hysterical."
"You drugged me."
"I helped you sleep."
"And Arthur died asking for me."
David looked away.
Margaret's tears fell silently.
For twenty-seven years, she had believed she had been beside Arthur as much as possible.
She had remembered fragments.
A waiting room.
A nurse.
Rain on a hospital window.
Perhaps some of those memories were real.
Perhaps some had been placed around holes David created.
"What were his last words?"
David sighed.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
"He said Paul has it."
"What did he mean?"
"Evidence."
"What else?"
David stared at her.
Then his expression softened in a way Margaret distrusted more than anger.
"He said tell Margaret I was right."
"About what?"
"He didn't say."
Margaret considered him.
Then smiled faintly.
"You're lying."
His expression changed.
"Why would I?"
"Because Arthur never needed to tell me he was right."
David frowned.
Margaret continued.
"He spent forty years telling me that every day."
Despite herself, she laughed.
David didn't.
She stood with Claire's help.
David grabbed the phone tighter.
"You're leaving?"
"Yes."
"I gave you what you wanted."
"No."
"What do you want?"
Margaret looked through the glass at the boy she had given birth to and the man he had chosen to become.
"The rest of my life."
She hung up.
David began pounding the glass.
Margaret didn't turn around.
Outside, Paul waited.
"Did he tell you?"
"Enough."
"Are you okay?"
"No."
Paul nodded.
"Me neither."
Margaret took his hand.
"Then we can start there."
As they left the building, Ruiz approached.
"We received the grand jury decision."
Margaret looked at her.
Ruiz continued.
"Arthur's case is moving forward."
Paul swallowed.
"What charge?"
"Murder."
Margaret closed her eyes.
Not relief.
Not joy.
Just the end of one uncertainty.
Ruiz added, "There's something else. Nathan gave us a storage code."
"For what?"
"A safe."
"What's inside?"
"According to him, Arthur's original will."
Margaret frowned.
"My will was settled decades ago."
Ruiz shook her head.
"Not that will."
"What do you mean?"
"Arthur apparently signed a second version two days before he died."
Paul looked at Margaret.
"And?"
Ruiz handed her a photocopy of the first page.
Margaret read the opening clause.
Then she looked at Paul in shock.
Arthur had left Bennett Manufacturing not to David.
Not to Mark.
Not even to Paul.
He had left controlling ownership to Margaret.
And according to the final clause, every asset obtained through fraudulent transfer was to return to her estate.
May you like
Including properties David had sold decades earlier.
Including money no one knew still existed.
