I shook my head. “And turn this into a public spectacle? Watch my only daughter be tried and convicted? See the name I spent my life building dragged through the mud? No. That’s not going to happen.”
“Then what?”
I took a deep breath, feeling a strange, cold calm wash over me. “You told me Rachel and Derek are in financial trouble. I want to know exactly how deep.”
Nora opened a drawer and pulled out a thick folder. “I already requested a full financial investigation after our call last night. The results came in this morning.”
I opened the folder. As I turned the pages, a bleak and pathetic picture formed: maxed-out credit cards, high-interest loans from predatory lenders, a luxury car with overdue payments, a mortgaged apartment about to go into foreclosure. A life of glittering ostentation built on a foundation of quicksand.
“They’re bankrupt,” I stated, closing the folder. “They’re desperate.”
“Exactly,” Nora confirmed. “And when you mentioned putting most of the money into a foundation, that was the trigger.”
“What saddens me most,” I said finally, my voice breaking slightly, “is not the attempt on my life. It’s that they didn’t need to do it. If they were in trouble, they could have just come to me. I would have helped them. I always have.”
Nora reached across the desk and squeezed my hand. “Some people are blinded by greed, Helen. They can’t see anything beyond their own desires.”
I stood up, a decision crystallizing in my mind. “I need you to do a few things for me, Nora. First, I want you to draft a new will. A very specific one. Second, I need you to schedule a meeting with Rachel and Derek for tomorrow, here in your office. Tell them it’s about the foundation, that I’m reconsidering the amounts.”
Nora looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “What are you planning?”
“Something they’ll never forget,” I replied, feeling a cold determination settle deep in my bones. “A lesson about consequences.”
The next morning, I woke up feeling strangely light. The pain was still there, a deep, sharp ache in my soul, but it was now accompanied by a clarity I had never experienced before. I chose a gray suit, elegant and understated, and pulled my hair back into a simple bun. I wanted Rachel to see me exactly as I was: the aging mother she had tried to erase.