Chapter 13 - What Wren Remembered About EliseDr. Reid never interrogated Wren.
That mattered.
Questions came slowly.
Sometimes weeks apart.
One afternoon Wren drew Carson Ridge.
Then a blue rectangle beneath a tree.
Dr. Reid asked:
“What’s that?”
“Mom’s box.”
“Did you see it at Carson Ridge?”
“No.”
“Where?”
“Mom’s room.”
“What do you remember?”
Wren thought.
“Mom put my horse picture inside.”
“Anything else?”
“Letters.”
“To who?”
“One said Daddy.”
Dr. Reid did not push.
Wren continued on her own.
“Mom said Daddy gets scared of fighting with Aunt Celeste.”
Conrad heard the session summary later.
He winced.
Even Elise had discussed family dynamics around Wren.
Not ideal.
But perhaps unavoidable during her illness.
Then Wren remembered a conversation.
Elise sat in bed.
Maureen stood nearby.
Elise said:
“The box stays.”
Maureen:
“You don’t need all this upsetting Conrad.”
Elise:
“That decision is not yours.”
Wren said Maureen left angry.
Conrad closed his eyes.
Elise had directly refused Maureen authority.
Maureen removed the box anyway after Elise died.
That was not misunderstanding.
Then Wren remembered something else.
“Aunt Celeste came.”
“When?”
“After Mom was gone.”
“How soon?”
“I don’t know.”
Conrad helped with timeline gently.
Was it before or after Christmas?
Before.
Before school restarted?
Yes.
Within weeks after Elise’s death.
Celeste and Maureen argued in the study.
Wren heard:
“Did you find it?”
Maureen said:
“Yes.”
Celeste:
“Destroy it.”
Maureen:
“No. Not yet.”
Conrad felt cold.
Maureen kept the box.
Why?
Maybe leverage.
Maybe self-protection.
Maybe because even she knew destroying Elise’s words crossed another line.
Celeste later denied saying destroy.
Wren’s memory could not be treated as perfect legal evidence.
Conrad understood that.
But it fit.
Then investigators recovered Maureen’s old text backup.
Message from Celeste, two years earlier:
If Elise wrote anything about Carson Ridge, I need to know.
Maureen:
I have it handled.
Not:
Destroyed.
Handled.
The blue box had become Maureen’s insurance.
Against Celeste too.
That explained why she kept it.
Everyone had evidence on everyone.
Family loyalty had turned into mutually assured silence.
Then Maya brought another detail.
High Mesa’s consulting agreement with Summit Axis contained a termination clause.
If the Carson Ridge sale failed because of “seller-side disclosure of internal trust disputes,” Celeste received nothing.
That created urgency.
Wren talking to Conrad could kill Celeste’s $1.25 million fee.
Maureen’s $105,000 final payment depended on closing too.
Suddenly the escalation in Maureen’s behavior made exact emotional sense.
Six weeks earlier, Wren saw the documents.
Four weeks earlier, she repeated the land conversation.
Ten days earlier, she opened the drawer.
Current day, she threatened to tell Conrad everything.
Each step moved closer to the closing deadline.
Maureen became more desperate.
Not because Celeste ordered increasing cruelty.
Because Maureen’s own promised retirement money was at risk.
Conrad sat alone with that realization.
He had wanted one mastermind.
There wasn’t one.
Celeste designed the financial deception.
Maureen chose how to silence Wren.
Their motives overlapped.
Their guilt did not need to be identical.
That was more believable.
And worse.
That night Wren climbed into Conrad’s bed.
He had stopped encouraging that after Elise died because he worried about creating dependency.
Now he didn’t care.
“Can I stay?”
“Yes.”
She lay beside him.
After several minutes:
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Did Maureen want money?”
Conrad stared into the dark.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Too much for you to worry about.”
“More than my bike?”
He almost smiled.
“Yes.”
“More than the house?”
“No.”
“More than Marisol makes?”
“Yes.”
Wren was quiet.
Then:
“Why didn’t she just ask?”
Conrad felt tears.
The simplest question again.
“Maybe she thought asking wouldn’t get what she wanted.”
“So she did bad stuff.”
“Yes.”
Wren turned toward him.
“Adults should ask.”
Conrad thought of Celeste.
Maureen.
Even himself.
“Yes.”
“They should.”
Then Wren fell asleep.
May you like
Conrad did not.
He stared at the ceiling and realized that almost every disaster in the story began when an adult decided consent was inconvenient.
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