Chapter Nine
Beatrice called it the last mile, and she briefed me on it at the table with a fresh legal pad, because the ground had shifted under all of us, and she wanted the new rules in writing in my head.
“They’re getting nervous,” she said. “You heard it in Karl’s pause.
Nervous people make mistakes, which is good for us, and nervous people accelerate, which is dangerous for you.
So, your job changes. Until now, you’ve been passive, a tired artist who takes her pills.
From today, you’re going to be useful. Everything they say to you from now on, I want in writing.
Phone calls can be misremembered. Texts are forever. ”
“You want me to bait them.”
“I want you to be a sick, confused, slightly guilty wife who asks natural questions over text because her voice is tired. The bait is that you’re exactly who they think you are.
” She slid the pad across. She’d written three lines on it.
“Three topics. The supplements. Bill’s tests.
And, delicately, the document. Never accuse.
Never inform. Ask the way a worried, dependent woman asks.
Their instinct will be to reassure you, and reassurance, from people doing what they’re doing, tends to be very specific and very incriminating. ”
“And if they smell it?”
“That’s why you’ll do it badly,” Beatrice said. “Typos. Wrong hours of the night. Half-finished thoughts. Millie at her best might alarm them. Millie at three a.m., anxious about her vitamins, is the woman they built. Give them their own creation.”
“There’s a version of this where it goes wrong, I imagine.”
She looked at me over her glasses. “The version where it goes wrong is this. One of them reads a question as knowledge instead of anxiety. If that happens, they won’t confront you, because confrontation isn’t their style, secrecy is.
They’ll move up their timeline. Karl files the incapacity paperwork early, or Bill produces his medical letter, or they simply arrive at your hotel with concern on their faces and a plan to bring you home.
Which is why two things are already true.
The hotel’s security office has instructions about who doesn’t get past the front desk without your say-so.
And if anything, anything, feels wrong, you don’t investigate, you don’t handle it, you call me and Nick Quinn, in that order or the reverse, I’m not proud. ”
“You put Nick in the protocol.”
“Mr. Quinn put himself in the protocol,” Beatrice said. “I merely refrained from billing for the time it would take me to remove him.”
***
I started with Dara, in the afternoon, mid-thread, under a photo she’d sent of the neighbor’s dog.
Millie: Random q. The evening blend, does it have anything in it that would upset my stomach on its own? Some nights here it hits me weird and I can’t tell if it’s the tea or just me
Her reply came fast.
Dara: It’s just you being run down. The blend is the same as always, chamomile base + the herbal mix Bill approved for your system. That’s WHY you take it, it protects your stomach. Are you drinking it hot? It has to be hot
Millie: Yes hot. Ok. It’s probably me. Sorry, I get anxious about everything lately
Dara: Don’t apologize. This is why I portioned everything, so you don’t have to think. Just follow the labels and let us do the worrying *heart emoji*
I photographed the thread and sent it to Beatrice, who replied: “Bill approved for your system” is lovely. The physician is now attached to the blend in her own words. Continue.
Bill was next, and Bill was easier, because Bill texted like a man who’d already half-lost his nerve. I answered his standing check-in reminder at an odd hour, misspelled on purpose.
Millie: Sorry for missin the appt *cry emoji* Question tho, those tests u ran in the spring…
did they check for like deficiencys?? Iron n stuff?
Someone at the hotel spa looked at my nails n was like “that looks like a deficiency” and now im kinda spiraling lol *cry emoji* just wondering if that would’ve shown up or if thats a diff test
The typing bubble appeared and disappeared twice before his answer came.
Dr. Bill: No need to spiral! Your panels were comprehensive and everything came back within normal range.
Nails can look off from stress and hot water.
If you’re worried, we can rerun everything when you’re back.
Continue your supplement routine in the meantime, consistency is what your system needs
Millie: Ok thank you. Everything was normal for sure? Even iron?
Dr. Bill: Everything, iron included. I review your results personally. You’re in good hands, Millie. The best thing you can do right now is rest and stay consistent with the routine
I sat looking at that one for a while. I review your results personally. In my folder at Parks’s office sat a lab sheet with my anemia on it, measured twice, and here was my doctor, in writing, personally reviewing me into the ground. I forwarded it to Beatrice with a note:
Millie: He just confirmed in writing that the spring panels showed normal iron. Parks has me anemic now, and she says anemia like mine doesn’t grow overnight.
Beatrice: I’m aware. So will a jury be. He’s now contradicted a laboratory in writing. Karl next, when it comes naturally. The document. Gently.
Karl made it easy by calling that evening to push again for a return date. I let the call wind down through my usual performance, and then, an hour later, I sent the follow-up text of an anxious wife who’d been lying awake doing paperwork in her head.
Millie: Still up, brain won’t stop. Weird question. I was looking for the licensing folder in the shared drive and I saw something called emergency delegation?? with my name in it. What is that? Did something happen with the company that I don’t know about?
The reply took eleven minutes, which for Karl, at that hour, meant drafting.
Karl: Nothing happened. That’s just standard contingency planning.
Every serious estate has documents like that.
Given your health this year, our advisors said we’d be irresponsible not to have a framework ready.
It protects YOU and the company if you’re ever too unwell to handle things.
It’s a draft, it’s nothing, you weren’t supposed to be bothered with it.
Please don’t worry over boilerplate. This is exactly the kind of stress you’re at the hotel to avoid.
I read it three times. Every sentence did work.
It confirmed the document existed. It confirmed he knew its contents.
It attached it to my health this year, the health he was manufacturing.
It scolded me for finding it. And it did all of that in his own thumbs, timestamped, saved to my phone and two other places within the minute.
Millie: Ok. Sorry. It just scared me seeing my name like that. Who’s the doctor on it? There was a signature line for a physician
Fourteen minutes this time.
Karl: Standard requirement for that document type.
Bill would handle any medical certification, obviously, he’s your physician of record and he knows your history better than anyone.
Millie, it’s midnight. Take your evening blend if you haven’t, it helps you sleep.
And stop reading legal drafts. Let me handle the boring parts. That’s the job, remember?
I sent back a single line:
Millie: ok. goodnight, I love you.
It went through, delivered, read, and I put the phone face down on the table and sat with my hands flat on either side of it, breathing. Because I’d just typed “I love you” to Karl, and it had worked. I felt like I needed to boil my thumbs.
Beatrice’s response to the screenshots came the next morning, and it was the longest text she’d ever sent me.
Beatrice: He has now confirmed, in writing: the document, his knowledge of it, its dependence on your incapacity, and Bill Kent as the certifying physician.
He has also instructed you to consume the evening blend, in writing, on the same night.
I’ve been doing this for thirty years, Mrs. Barber, and I want you to understand that defendants usually make us dig for one of these. Almost done. Hold.
Hold. I held, and holding got harder by the day, because the pressure from the house kept climbing, and I could chart it now the way Parks charted my blood.
Karl pushed for a return date on every call, and the pushing changed tone, less coaxing, more scheduling.
“The board dinner is coming up,” he said on the worst of those calls. “People are asking where my wife is. It’s starting to look strange, Millie, and strange is bad for the brand.”
“Tell them I’m working. Artists disappear to work, it’s the most normal thing in the world. It’s practically marketing.”
“For a week, it’s marketing. Past that, it’s a story, and I’m the one standing at these dinners managing the story alone.” His voice tightened one notch. “I need a date. Not for me. For the calendar.”
“The calendar can have me when the color scripts are done.”
“And when is that?”
“When they’re done, Karl. You’ve been married to this process for fifteen years, you know it doesn’t take appointments.”
“I’ve been married to you for fifteen years,” he said, “and I have never once had to negotiate to see you. Do you hear yourself lately? Bill’s right.
Something in your routine is off.” A breath, and then the softness came back into his voice.
“I’m sorry. I’m worried, that’s all. Come home, let Bill look at you, and if he says you’re fine, I’ll drive you back to that hotel myself and pay for another month. Deal?”
“Let me finish the scripts,” I said. “Then everything you want.”
Bill’s texts got clinical and insistent – structured supervision, medication compliance, a proper care plan for when I’d be back home, sentences that read like drafts for a document I’d already found.
And Dara. Dara called, her warmth fading as she asked twice in one call whether I was sleeping, whether I felt foggy, whether the routine was helping, and I understood that she was troubleshooting a dose that had stopped working.
“You sound different,” she said, near the end. “Clearer. It’s good. It’s just… it’s fast.”
“It’s the ocean air this far inland,” I said. “Miracle stuff.”
She didn’t laugh. Dara had laughed at my worse jokes for thirty years, on reflex, and she didn’t laugh this time.
That silence told me more than the whole call.
Somewhere in that beautiful house, the two of them were looking at each other over my empty chair and doing arithmetic.
She’s better. She shouldn’t be better. Which means either the tea stopped working, or…
I reported the silence to Beatrice, because by then I reported everything, and she took it as seriously as I did.
“Won’t be long now.” she said over the phone.
“I told you days, and I meant it. The records requests are back, the file is assembled, and I’m meeting with people I can’t name yet before the end of the week.
Whatever you feel coming, we are ahead of it.
Keep your door locked, keep your phone charged, and keep being their tired artist for just a little longer. ”
I was still holding the phone when Dara’s last text of the night came through, and I was half asleep in my safe, flowered, guarded suite:
Dara: One more thing and then I’ll let you sleep.
I checked with the hotel restaurant about your orders because I worry, and babe, none of it is on your protocol.
Your system can’t handle random rich food right now, that’s probably the weird stomach.
Just take what I packed. You always get worse when you stop.