“No.”
“Good news?”
I thought about it.
“No.”
She sat beside me.
“What then?”
I watched sunlight flicker on the lake.
“Finished news.”
She smiled.
I burned the letter that evening.
Not angrily.
Not ceremonially.
I simply held one corner over the fireplace until flame caught.
Paper curled.
Ink blackened.
Then it was gone.
Two years after Cordelia pushed me down the stairs, Bellweather House reopened.
Not as a resort.
Not as a private monument to my grandfather.
As the Eleanor Mercer Foundation for Survivors of Financial and Domestic Coercion.
Phoebe pretended the name was too long.
Rebecca loved it.
We converted part of the west wing into temporary housing.
The old library became a legal-resource center.
The conservatory hosted support groups.
And Grandfather’s study became the foundation office.
I kept his desk.
On the wall behind it, I hung three photographs.
Grandfather.
Grandmother Eleanor.
And Rebecca.
On opening day, more than two hundred people filled the lawn.
