"I don't think she started out wanting to hurt you. I think she fell in love with the future you might give her, then became angry when the future didn't arrive on her schedule."
I stared at her. "That's a generous interpretation."
"Maybe. I also think she knew exactly what she was doing by the end. Both things can be true."
I pushed food around my plate. "Did you hate her all along?"
"No. I liked her when she remembered Dad's birthday. I liked her when she helped you through that bad winter. But somewhere along the way she stopped asking what you wanted and started explaining why you were wrong to want it."
Her words reminded me of conversations I'd almost forgotten. Tessa complaining that I had no ambition because I refused to sell the workshop. Tessa telling friends that she ran the business side of Price & Son, even though her involvement had always been informal and often limited. Tessa explaining to a curator that I was sentimental and needed persuasion. At the time those comments embarrassed me, but I had accepted her apologies because I believed she meant well.
"Why didn't you tell me more directly?" I asked Nora.
She gave me an exhausted look. "I did, Daniel. You just didn't want to hear it."
I couldn't argue. I remembered telling her not to judge someone whose circumstances she didn't understand. Nora had said relationships weren't a contest in who understood money better. I had dismissed her. Now I was sitting opposite her, asking her to explain the warning I'd refused.
The next morning, Malik found something small but important. He'd been reviewing the workshop's appointment book, a battered binder we still used despite having digital calendars. On the Wednesday before our trip, someone had written an after-hours collection appointment in blue ink. The handwriting wasn't mine or Malik's, and the name listed as contact was T. Morgan. The entry had been tucked between unrelated delivery notes, likely because the person writing it assumed nobody would examine the old binder afterward.
Malik called me from the workshop. "I didn't put this in," he said. "I wasn't even here Wednesday afternoon. Tess came by to borrow the rolling ladder, remember?"
I remembered. She'd said an exhibition client needed to photograph furniture in a high-ceilinged space and asked if she could borrow a small ladder. I'd told her where the key was and gone back to a restoration job across town. When she returned the ladder, I hadn't thought to ask where she'd used it. Now the date placed her at the workshop at a time when freight arrangements were being finalized.
We photographed the appointment entry and gave it to Miriam. Malik then mentioned that Tessa had asked him two weeks earlier whether the rear loading door could be opened without triggering the motion alert on my phone. He'd answered truthfully that authorized access during business hours could be scheduled through the system. She'd laughed and said the notification service was almost as possessive as I was. Malik hadn't found the question alarming at the time because she'd used the building regularly.