For the first time…
She looked nervous.
I reached into my grocery bag and removed my phone.
The recording had captured everything.
The water.
The laughter.
Her threat to fire the waiter.
Patricia’s comment about ruining the photographs.
George accusing me of being a thief.
But that wasn’t why I’d come.
For weeks, something about Vanessa had troubled me.
Her desperate insistence on moving the wedding up before the end of the month.
Her emotional meltdowns every time Ethan mentioned a prenuptial agreement.
Her refusal to discuss anything involving the Carter family businesses.
And most suspicious of all…
Her constant phone calls with an attorney from Memphis whom no one in the family had ever met.
I wasn’t an overprotective mother.
I was a woman who had built one of Tennessee’s largest construction and development companies after becoming a widow at thirty-eight.
I’d negotiated with governors.
