Chapter 5 - GRACE’S MEMORANDUM
Grace wrote the memorandum six months before she died.
I knew it existed.
I had never read it fully.
That is difficult to admit.
She told me it contained notes for Lily’s future.
Medical history.
Family preferences.
Letters.
Instructions for sentimental belongings.
I could not bring myself to open it after the funeral.
So I locked it away.
Now it was gone.
Why would Nora want it?
Elizabeth answered before I did.
“Maybe Grace wrote down what she suspected.”
Of course.
We searched backups.
Grace had worked on a laptop synced to an encrypted estate archive.
Our IT director retrieved an earlier digital version.
The memorandum was twenty-seven pages.
Most was exactly what I expected.
Lily’s jewelry.
Her grandmother’s paintings.
A note about Grace’s wedding dress.
Favorite recipes.
Then page nineteen.
HOUSEHOLD CONCERNS.
Grace had listed five suspicious vendors.
Three matched Daniel Price’s findings.
She wrote:
Nora has increasingly insisted invoices be routed through her before accounting.
Then:
I do not know whether Nora is involved or whether someone is using her access.
Important distinction.
Grace had not accused her.
Then a specific incident:
Signature stamp found in Nora’s supply cart after I believed it was locked in the office.
Nora said she moved it while cleaning.
Grace accepted that explanation temporarily.
Then:
If I become too ill to finish this, Ethan must review household vendor records personally.
I stopped reading.
The room blurred.
Grace had tried to leave me a warning.
I had left it unread for three years because grief made the safe easier than the page.
Was that my fault?
Partly.
Not Nora’s wrongdoing.
My avoidance.
Different.
Then the final paragraph:
I worry Nora knows I am looking.
There it was.
Grace and Nora had been in conflict before Grace died.
But Grace died from cancer.
No mystery.
No poisoned wife revelation.
Her oncology records, family presence, and disease progression left no reasonable basis for turning her death into something else.
I refused to let paranoia rewrite her illness.
Nora had not killed Grace.
But she may have known Grace documented the financial scheme.
That memorandum could expose her.
So why wait three years?
Because Nora thought it was destroyed.
Until the week before the tea.
That was when I told her I planned to open Grace’s papers with Lily on the anniversary of Grace’s death.
Nora realized the memorandum still existed.
May you like
The tea was not about murdering me.
It was about making me ill enough to remove the document before I read it.
