“Ask him why he proposed three weeks after accessing our corporate archives.”
I stared at Ben.
He went still.
“Ask him,” my father urged. “Ask your best friend why he secretly met with a trust attorney before he bought Rosie’s ring.”
“Ben?”
His expression told me part of it was true.
My father’s voice softened.
“Sweetheart, he has manipulated both of you. I tried to protect Rosie, but she wouldn’t listen. Now she’s unconscious, and he controls everything she owns.”
I ended the call.
The corridor became very quiet.
“You met with a trust attorney?” I asked.
Ben nodded.
“Before you proposed?”
“Yes.”
“You accessed Hale Medical’s archives?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Rosie asked me to.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Of course she did.”
“She had found irregular transfers from her trust.”
“And marrying you gave you control.”
“If she became incapacitated, yes.”
“Which she now is.”
Pain flashed across his face.
“You think I planned this?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“I have sat beside your sister through every specialist appointment, every injection, every night she was too frightened to sleep.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I love her.”
“You said the real reason you married her was much worse than I thought.”
“Because the truth behind it is worse. Not because the marriage was false.”
He pulled his wallet from his pocket and removed a small laminated card. It was worn at the edges.
He handed it to me.
It was a photograph from our fourth-grade spring fair.
Rosie stood between us in a yellow sweater, holding a blue ribbon she had won for a clay bird. I was grinning at the camera. Ben was not.
He was looking at Rosie.
Even at nine years old, the expression was unmistakable.
Adoration.
On the back, in childish handwriting, Rosie had written:
Ben says he will marry me if I still like him when we are old. I think twenty-five is old.
My throat closed.
“She gave this to me the night I proposed,” Ben said. “She remembered the promise. So did I.”
“Then why keep secrets from me?”
“Because Rosie wanted to protect you until we had proof.”
“Protect me from what?”
“From learning that Richard Hale may have built your entire life around a crime.”
A nurse appeared and told Ben he could see the twins.
He looked toward the NICU, then back at me.
“Please wait here.”
“I’m going home.”
“Claire—”
“You stay with your wife and children.”
“I won’t let you go alone.”
“You don’t get to let me do anything.”
His face tightened.
I immediately heard Rosie’s voice in my head.
Claire, Ben gets bossy when he’s scared. You get mean.
She had said it after the three of us became trapped on a stalled ski lift years earlier. Ben had spent forty minutes demanding that we conserve our phone batteries. I had told him I would throw him off the chair if he issued one more instruction.
Rosie had laughed until she cried.
The memory almost brought me to my knees.
I touched Ben’s sleeve.
“Go see your babies.”
“What will you do?”
“Call Daniel. Ask him to meet me at my house.”
Ben hesitated.
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
“And don’t tell Daniel everything over the phone.”
