My parents called while I was lying in a hospital bed, unable to move after a horrific car accident. “Your sister’s awards ceremony is more important, so we won’t be coming,” they said coldly. Left all alone, I watched my sister shine at the ceremony. But the next morning, my parents kept calling me… and their voices sounded full of panic…

And I’d like to know how many of you would have sat where I sat.

Kesler came back the following Wednesday with the blue folder and a small silver recorder that she set on the tray and pointed at me like a question.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

I looked at the place card in my wallet, open on my lap.

“March of ’24,” I said. “A Saturday. My parents’ kitchen table on Birch Street. April had her laptop open to the foundation’s books because the board wanted a treasurer, and she wanted it to be me.”

“Why you?”

“Because I’m a CPA and because I’m family. She said it in that order.”

“Go on.”

“Three invoices from Northline Event Services. Twenty-five thousand. Forty thousand. Twenty-five thousand. No line items. No vendor tax form in the file. I asked who they were.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘They’re a boutique vendor, Care. They do all our events.’”

“And you said?”

“I said a boutique vendor still fills out a W-9.”

“She laughed?”

“My mother told me to stop auditing my sister at the table.”

Kesler wrote nothing down.

The recorder’s red light reflected in her glasses.

“The next morning, I wrote the letter, declined the seat, recommended an audit, copied Wendy Marsh.”

“Response?”

“Noted.”

Kesler waited.

“Would you testify to that, Miss Ashby? Under oath? In a courtroom with your sister at the defense table?”

The gym down the hall clanged.

Somebody laughed at the nurses’ station.

I thought about a gold card on a plate on a television screen.

“Yes,” I said.

She reached over and stopped the recorder.

“Her attorney gets this in discovery, probably by Friday.”

“I know.”

She stood and put the folder under her arm.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “most people in your chair say no.”

“Most people in my chair,” I said, “have somebody standing next to it.”

She left.

It was 2:40 on a Wednesday, and I understood that the old version of my family had just ended and nobody had heard a door.

The collect call came Friday at 9:02.

I accepted it.

I had decided I would accept every one because the recording never says who’s calling, and I wasn’t going to guess.

“Gordon read it to me,” April said.

No “Care.”

No “Thank God.”

Just the concrete echo in her voice, flat as a countertop.

“Okay.”

“You’ve wanted this since we were kids.”

“I wanted you to fix it two years ago at the table. I asked you.”

“You asked me in front of Mom like I was a client.”

“You showed me the books in front of Mom like I was staff.”

Something metal banged behind her.

“Mom’s putting up the house,” she said. “You know that. Birch Street. The one you re-roofed. One wire from you and she wouldn’t have to.”

“I could have,” I said. “That’s true.”

“So—”

“So that’s your debt, April. Not mine. I didn’t set up an LLC at a post office box.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then tell me. Tell me who owns Northline.”

Silence with a door in it.

“You have one minute remaining.”

She laughed once, and it had nothing in it.

“Some things matter more, huh, Caroline?”

She let that land.

“Don’t come Tuesday to the hearing. Don’t sit behind me like you’re on my side.”

“I hadn’t decided about Tuesday.”

“I decided for you.”

Click.

Thank you for using—

I sat with the phone in my lap and found my thumb resting on the morphine button, pressing though nothing hurt that the pump could reach.

I moved my hand.

I put it flat on my knee.

I stayed like that until Owen came for the afternoon session and asked why I was looking at the wall.

Hollis came on Monday with a fruit basket wrapped in cellophane.

Every time he shifted his weight, the cellophane crackled.

He had been my managing partner for nine years and had never once visited me anywhere.

“You look strong,” he said.

“I look horizontal.”

He laughed too long.

“Listen, take the full 12 weeks. Paid, of course. Nobody expects—”

“Which clients asked?”

The cellophane stopped.

“Asked what?”

“About me. About the name.”

He looked at the basket.

“Kramer and—”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Caroline, this is a small town. It’ll pass.”

“It’ll pass for the firm. My last name isn’t on a leave of absence.”

He had no answer for that.

So he adjusted the cellophane.

“Remind me of my non-solicit.”

He blinked.

“Twelve months. Clients you personally serviced.”

“You’re not thinking about—”

“I’m asking what it says.”

“That’s what it says.”