I said I could not know her motives, but a truthful statement should not depend on my approval.
Jessica went quiet.
“I used to ask Richard whether I was doing the right thing before I made every difficult decision,” she said.
“I suppose I started doing that with you afterward.”
I told her we both needed to stop placing that responsibility on each other.
Several days later she gave Naomi an account of the envelope and the names she remembered seeing.
She also described a conversation in which Richard asked her to organize a search for old newspaper references to Mara.
At the time he said he was preparing a memorial note.
Jessica now realized that he might have been checking whether public records contradicted his story.
Naomi thanked her and asked for the approximate dates.
Jessica searched her calendar and provided the entries she could verify.
No public statement followed.
The smallness of the act seemed to disappoint Jessica at first.
She had expected telling the truth to produce an immediate, visible result.
I reminded her that an investigator’s work was not designed to make witnesses feel redeemed.
It was designed to determine what could be proved.
She accepted that without arguing.
Later she told me she had begun volunteering with a reading program at a community center.
I was careful not to interpret the decision as evidence that she had become an entirely different person.
I could simply acknowledge that she was doing something constructive.
The difference between those judgments made it easier for us to speak without reopening the same argument.
CHAPTER 40: The Last Stored Trunk
The storage company eventually located a surviving receipt for the trunk’s release.
The record contained Richard’s signature and the signature of an employee acting as witness.
Helen’s name did not appear.
The accompanying note claimed that Helen had given telephone authorization, but the document did not identify who received the call.
Helen denied providing authorization.
The storage employee had died, and no recording of the alleged call existed.
Naomi said the discrepancy could support further inquiry into the transfer but did not by itself establish a criminal offense.
The trunk itself had been sent to a property owned by Richard’s father.
Caroline said Richard had cleared that property after his father’s death.
She did not know whether the trunk was still there.
Mara felt a wave of anger when she realized that her mother’s letters might have been moved repeatedly while Richard told her they had been destroyed.
