Sienna stepped out first.
“Good,” she said, looking past me at the cabin. “You’re ready.”
I opened the blue folder on the porch rail.
Her smile faltered.
Not disappeared.
Not yet.
Just faltered enough to show me she had expected an old man, not a line.
“Frank,” she said. “What is this?”
“This is the deed.”
I kept my voice even.
“This is the property tax record. This is the insurance page. This is your message telling me not to embarrass everyone over empty rooms.”
Gordon had one suitcase halfway out of the trunk.
He stopped with his hand on the handle.
Beverly looked from Sienna to me, then back again.
Sienna gave a little laugh.
It was too quick.
Too bright.
“Okay, this is unnecessary,” she said. “Nobody is stealing your cabin.”
“No,” I said. “You’re just moving people into it without permission.”
That made Gordon straighten.
“Now hold on,” he said.
I looked at him.
He was not a bad man in the simple villain sense.
Most people are not.
But he had accepted the benefit of a lie before checking who paid for it.
That matters too.
“Sienna told us you offered,” Beverly said quietly.
There it was.
The first crack.
Sienna turned toward her mother.
“I said Frank understood,” she snapped.
“No,” I said. “You said Elliot and you decided.”
Then I lifted the last page.
Elliot’s message.
Sienna saw his name at the top before I read it.
The color drained out of her face in a slow, satisfying way I will not pretend I hated.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.
Elliot.
