And don’t ask me how. Diana Hartley was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer 8 months ago. She’s undergoing treatment, but the prognosis isn’t good. Stage three pancreatic cancer. Margaret didn’t know how to feel about that. Part of her wanted to feel satisfied. karmic justice, divine retribution, whatever you wanted to call it, but mostly she just felt tired. How long does she have? Doctors are saying 6 months to a year, maybe less. So Diane was dying. The sister who had stolen everything from her, her freedom, her home, her savings, her husband’s final years was dying.
And Margaret still had questions. Questions that only Diane could answer. Why? Why had she done it? Why had she targeted her own sister? Why had she destroyed Margaret’s life to build her own? There had to be a reason. Something Margaret didn’t know. Something that would make all of this make sense. She looked at Jessica, then at Marcus, then at David and Sarah Chen, who had come to every meeting, who had supported her through every revelation. I need to see her, Margaret said.
I need to talk to Diane face to face. Jessica frowned. Margaret, I don’t think that’s a good idea. If she knows we’re on to her, she could destroy evidence, flee the country, anything. She’s dying. She’s not going anywhere. Margaret’s voice was steady now. Certain. I didn’t spend 20 years in prison to get answers from a courtroom. I need to hear it from her. I need to look her in the eye and ask her why. Jessica started to argue, but Sarah put a hand on her arm.
Let her do this,” Sarah said quietly. “She’s earned the right,” Jessica sighed, looked at Margaret for a long moment. “Okay,” she finally said. “We’ll go to Arizona, but we do this my way. We document everything. We record every conversation, and the moment she says anything incriminating, we use it to bury her.” Margaret nodded. It was time to confront the sister who had stolen her life. The flight from Nashville to Phoenix took three hours and 47 minutes. Margaret spent most of it staring out the window, watching the country roll past beneath her.
The green hills of Tennessee, giving way to the brown plains of Texas, then the rust red deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. She’d never been on a plane before, never had a reason to go anywhere that far. Her whole life had been contained within a 50-mi radius of Grover’s Mill, the house where she was born. the school where she taught, the church where she married Robert, the prison where she’d spent the last two decades. Now she was flying across the country to confront the sister who had put her there.
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