The Standing She Did Not Know She Had

There was one number that kept calling that my phone had been quietly collecting for three weeks, and it was not Beau’s.

Rosanna Aldworth.

My late uncle’s estate attorney.

She had left me a string of neat, professional voicemails about a private folder my uncle had wanted reviewed with me in person, and I had ignored every one, because I was nine months pregnant and certain it was routine paperwork about personal effects.

At 3:12 in the morning, with Isla asleep beside me and Brigid folded into the visitor chair, I finally called back, and Rosanna Aldworth answered on the second ring, as though she had been waiting up for me.

“Larisa,” she said.