Lizzie stood. “Hi.”
Sarah’s throat went tight. “Hi. How did you…”
“Carlos and Jasper arranged it. Can we sit? Please?”
They moved to the small café off the lobby. Found a table in the corner. Sarah couldn’t look at her directly. Couldn’t face the hurt she’d caused.
Lizzie set the folder on the table. A zip drive beside it.
“I don’t need to talk about what happened between us. Not right now. But you need to see this.”
Sarah opened the folder.
An arrest record for her mother. Multiple. Several for her father as well. There were years’ worth of records showing her parents history with drugs.
“Your father was arrested again last week.” Lizzie’s voice stayed quiet. “Meth possession. Going by the picture, your mom was at least not lying when she said he needed teeth. Looks like doing meth for so long left him with quiet a few missing.”
Sarah glanced at the picture of her father looking shriveled and awful with a toothless grin. She kept reading. She couldn’t form words.
She flipped the page and saw a statement from Mr. Patterson. The neighbor from Wisconsin. The man her mother had hit with the car.
I didn’t really see who was driving at the time. Someone ran away. I knew that. My son later told me he saw Mrs. Fairview running out of the car, around the side, and pushing Sarah into the driver’s seat. I confronted her about it, and she begged me to keep the story as Sarah being the driver. She didn’t want to go to jail and leave Sarah along with her husband, whom she claimed was abusing her. I felt pity. So I lied. Or rather, I didn’t correct the story.
Sarah read it twice. Set it down. Picked it up again.
“How did you find him?”
“Public records. I called him. He remembered you.” Lizzie shifted in her chair. “He’s willing to make a statement to the media if you need him to.”
The next section held different documents. Statements from people who’d known her in San Francisco. The woman who’d managed the motel where Sarah first worked. Character references from Aspen, from Key West. People vouching for her, for the person she’d been before and after Billy.
Then the last section.
Sarah stopped. Jonathan Barnes. Arrest records. Solicitation. Drug possession.
She pushed the folder away. “No. I can’t use this.”
“You knew.” Not a question.
“Yes.” Sarah closed the folder completely. “Jonathan had a problem for years. Billy tried to help. Paid for rehab twice. But Jonathan kept using. That’s why Billy structured the trust the way he did. He didn’t want the estate controlled by someone with an active addiction.” She looked at the closed folder. “It was one of the things Billy and I understood about each other. We both had family lost to drugs.”
“Why haven’t you used it in the lawsuit?”
“Before Billy died, he and Jonathan were getting somewhere. Jonathan had been clean almost two years. They were talking again. Meeting for dinner.” Sarah’s voice broke. “I didn’t want to destroy that. Even after Billy was gone, I couldn’t wreck what they’d been building.”
“You’re letting Jonathan wreck your reputation instead. Your entire life.”
“This might disprove my mother’s lies. But it won’t change what people think about Billy and me. They’ll still believe I manipulated him. That I was a gold digger who conned an old man.”
Lizzie pulled out more papers. “Statements from people who knew you and Billy together.”
Sarah scanned the names. People she trusted. People who’d been there through all of it.
“Stavros too.”
Sarah’s head snapped up. “Stavros?”
“Jasper and I called him. He told us that years ago, right after you and Billy married, he confronted Billy. He thought youwere a gold digger. But Billy told him the truth. All of it. About you being gay, about the marriage being an arrangement that worked for both of you. Stavros has known the whole time.”
