PART ONE – THE CALL FROM ATLANTA
My sister called me in tears.
“Mom died last night,” she sobbed into the phone. “The funeral is Friday. She left everything to me, so don’t bother coming back.
You get nothing.”
I held the phone away from my ear and just smiled.
Not because I didn’t love my mother.
Because my mother was standing three feet away from me on the patio of our rented villa on Martha’s Vineyard, sipping her morning tea and looking very much alive.
My name is Amara Vance, and at thirty-two I make my living as a forensic accountant. People hire me to find the money they don’t want anyone to see—hidden accounts, quiet kickbacks, ghost corporations. I make other people’s fraud fall apart for a living.
I just never expected my biggest case would be my own family.
The morning air off the Massachusetts coast was cool and smelled like salt and pine.
The Atlantic stretched out in front of us, calm and blue, the kind of peace you only find when you are far from Atlanta and even farther from drama.
To my left, my mother—Mama Estelle—moved slowly through her tai chi routine on the deck. At sixty-five, she looked radiant. Her hands, which had trembled so badly months ago, were steady.
Four months here in secret had put color back in her cheeks and strength back in her spine.
Four months hiding from the world.
More specifically: hiding from my sister, Dominique.
I glanced at my phone again. The screen glowed with an old photo of Dominique and me, arms wrapped around each other on a hot Georgia afternoon. I’d set it as her contact picture years ago, back when I still believed in that version of us.
“Amara, are you there?” Dominique’s voice climbed an octave, high and trembling.
It sounded like a performance I’d heard a hundred times before.
I hesitated, then slid my thumb over the screen.
“I’m here,” I said, but I didn’t say anything else.
She took a loud, dramatic breath.
“It’s Mom,” she sobbed. “Oh God, Amara, Mom is gone. She had a heart attack last night.
The nurse at Oak Haven called me at three in the morning. They tried everything, but it was too late. She’s gone.”
I sat up straighter and stared at my mother’s back as she shifted into crane pose, perfectly balanced against the rising sun.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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