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“I didn’t know. For years I didn’t know. I just stayed in that place—I wouldn’t call it living—trying to survive. But when I got out, I put it together,” she said.
“What did you put together?” I asked.
“He thought when I ‘died’ he was going to get everything. But my father had set up a trust. I was the main beneficiary, then Amy if something happened to me. If something happened to her, it would all go back to my father. Raphael was cut out of the loop.”
“Good thing he read the trust documents before he did something heinous,” I said.
“Yeah. The one small benefit in this. I can’t imagine what he put her through all those years, but at least he kept her alive,” she said. She blinked then met my eyes. “What did he put her through?”
“He wasn’t physically abusive,” I said, and she looked relieved. “He was a dick. Treated her like crap, but given what we know now, that’s the best possible outcome, I guess.”
“Yeah. He probably did that to keep my father off his back, but I worried about her once he was gone,” she said.
“You knew your father died?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t know when, but it was only a matter of time. My poor girl all alone with that monster,” she said, her eyes starting to tear.
Just as quickly she was back, focused on the matter at hand.
“I have to assume he found a way to tap the trust,” she said.
I nodded. “Yes. It’s gone.”
She scoffed. “He ran through my father’s entire legacy, took everything that he had built over fifty years of work.”
“Yes. He’s broke and getting desperate. That’s why he’s taken Amethyst and Crystal,” I said.
“Crystal?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“Amethyst wanted to name the baby after her mother,” I said.
She bit her lip, then shook her head. “Thoughts of her were the only thing that kept me alive, kept me halfway sane.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. Suspecting I didn’t need to say anything at all.
“When I got out, I wanted to go to her, but I didn’t,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
She shrugged, her expression tortured. “What could I say? I worried that showing up would hurt her, and I didn’t want to disrupt her life. Hoped that she had found her place, and I knew she would be better off without me messing up everything,” she said.
“But you left her that money,” I pointed out.
“I did,” she said, her eyes locked on mine. “I had been watching and saw when you started coming around.”
“So you left her money?” I asked, confused about why she had done that.
“Well, Josh, life has given me a good nose for trouble, and my gut told me she might get in a tight spot and need a way out. So I left her the means to do so if she needed. I will not apologize for that,” I said.
“I’m not asking you to. I’m glad she had someone to look out for her,” I said.
And I meant it.
That wasn’t a thing I would have thought even a week ago. In fact, her mysterious benefactor was something that had plagued me. Even though I hadn’t found a paper trail, I’d convinced myself it was Carol, which was the logical and easy solution. So eventually, I’d decided to let it go.
But now, something else occurred to me.
“You were at the park and the café too, weren’t you?”
