Chapter 8 - Rachel Brings Claire’s Last Email
Claire’s sister Rachel arrived from Vermont with something none of us
knew existed.
An email.
Claire sent it three weeks before she died.
Subject:
Lily’s future.
Claire wrote that she trusted me to raise our daughter.
She worried my grief would make me dependent on whoever helped
afterward.
Then she wrote:
If Vanessa stays close after I’m gone, please remember that kindness is
not the same thing as authority.
I stared at the sentence.
Vanessa had been visiting Claire during treatment.
I knew that.
I did not know Claire had become uncomfortable with how interested
Vanessa was in finances.
Rachel admitted she dismissed the concern.
“She was dying. I thought she was anxious.”
So had I.
The dead could not testify.
But contemporaneous emails could show what they had been thinking.
Claire had never described Vanessa as the person she wanted controlling
May you like
Lily’s trust.
Quite the opposite.
