The Last of the Stanfields(5)

I hope you’ll forgive me for leaving this letter unsigned. It’s not out of cowardice, I assure you, but rather for your own good that I remain anonymous. I’d caution against telling anyone about this letter—most of all Maggie and your father. Destroy it as soon as you’ve finished reading it. Keeping it will serve no purpose.

Please believe me when I say that I wish you nothing but the best, and hope you will accept my much-belated condolences.

“Pretty diabolical,” I remarked. “No way of gleaning a single detail, if it was written by a man or a woman, nothing.”

“Whoever wrote it is demented, that much I can tell you. The only sane thing in there is where it says to destroy the stupid thing.”

“It also says not to tell anyone about it, most of all you.”

“You were right to ignore that advice.”

“You . . . and Dad.”

“Hold on—there’s no way you’re telling Dad. I’m not letting you worry him with your sketchy web of crap.”

“Would you just stop it! Always telling me what to do and what not to do. I’m the oldest!”

“What, you’re one year older so you’re somehow blessed with superior intelligence? In that case, you wouldn’t have come running over here to show me the stupid letter in the first place.”

“I didn’t come running,” I corrected her. “I received it the day before yesterday.”

Maggie pulled up a chair and sat opposite me. I slid the letter across the table and watched my sister run her fingers across the surface of the paper, admiring the lavish stock.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe this rubbish,” she said with a sigh.

“I don’t know what I believe. But why take the time to write the thing if it was all just made up?”

“Because there’s a nutter on every corner, ready to do anything and everything to hurt people.”

“No one’s out there trying to hurt me. Boring as it may seem to you, I actually don’t go around making enemies.”

“What about some guy whose heart you broke?”

“If only! My love life is a barren wasteland, remember?”

“What about that reporter you were seeing?”

“He’d never be capable of anything this despicable. What’s more, we left things on good terms.”

“So, how exactly does this creepy letter writer know about me?”

“He seems to know a lot more than that. He says don’t tell Maggie, don’t tell Dad, but doesn’t mention Michel. So, that means—”

“It means he knew you wouldn’t risk traumatizing our brother by dragging him into this whole mess,” Maggie said, fidgeting with her lighter on the table. “So, the poison-pen must know exactly what he’s like. I have to admit that is a little unsettling.”

“Agreed. What do we do?” I asked, noting with silent amusement that Maggie had picked up on my nickname for the letter writer.

“Nothing. We do nothing. It’s the best way not to be baited into his twisted little game. We put this piece of rubbish where it belongs, and forget the whole thing.”

“Can you imagine Mum being rich when she was young? The letter said ‘a fortune,’ which doesn’t make any sense at all. If she had been rich, why did we always have so much trouble making ends meet?”

“Come on, don’t exaggerate. It’s not like we were living in poverty; we had everything we needed!” said Maggie, her temper rising.

“You may have had everything you needed, but there was a whole lot going on that you didn’t know about.”

“Like what?”

“Scrounging before payday, for example. You think Mum put in all those extra hours tutoring just for the hell of it? And all those weekends Dad spent editing manuscripts?”

“He worked in publishing and Mum was a teacher. I always thought that was just part of their jobs.”

“You thought wrong. Everything after the workday was extra. And when they sent us to summer camp, they didn’t just run off to the Bahamas. They worked in the summers, too. Mum even did shifts at the front desk of a hospital.”

“Our mum?” Maggie uttered in shock.

“Three summers in a row, when you were thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen.”

“And why were you told about this and not me?”

“Because I asked. See, who would have thought? Maybe one year does make a difference.”

That shut Maggie up for a moment, however fleetingly.

“No.” She shook her head. “No way. Mum sitting on some secret stash of money? It just doesn’t hold water.”

“The letter said ‘fortune.’ That might not necessarily mean money.”

“Fine. If not money, what was all that stuff about this mysterious fortune not being inherited?”

“Good point. The poison-pen also said we’d have to be skillful to find proof . . . Maybe there’s hidden meaning to the choice of words.”

“Sure, could be. But that’s a whole lot of maybes. Just throw the stupid letter away, forget you ever saw it.”

“Right, sure! You don’t fool me for a second. I give it two days before you run over to Dad’s and ransack the place.”

Maggie flicked her lighter and lit up her cigarette at last, taking a nice long drag and puffing a cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling.