Voss leaned forward.
“Clara, there’s something else. One of the names appears several times. Lydia Mercer.”
I stopped breathing.
Grant’s mother.
Lydia had died five years before I met him. At least, that was what I had been told. A private illness. A quiet funeral. A tragic loss that Grant described only when he wanted sympathy and never in enough detail to invite questions.
“What about her?” I asked.
Voss hesitated.
“There are recordings.”
The words fell between us.
I understood before I wanted to.
Grant had learned cruelty somewhere.
Maybe inherited it. Maybe endured it. Maybe watched it bloom at the family dinner table like a centerpiece no one dared remove.
But this was not pity rising in me.
It was calculation.
“Does Grant know you found them?”
“No,” Voss said. “Not yet.”
“Good.”
Voss’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Why?”
“Because he still thinks this is about me.”
