“But before I go to New York, can you tell me about your meetings with Sage?”
“What do you want to know?”
“How long you’ve been chatting to Mum without telling me?”
She paused before she replied. “Why would I mention it? You’d just tell me I’m throwing money down the drain.”
I cringed. That is what I might have said.
“What does Bryce think?”
There was a longer pause. “He doesn’t know. He thinks I’m at yoga. I know he’d have the same tone as you. But I don’t care. She’s told me things she had no way of knowing.”
“She has the internet.”
Katy growled down the phone. “Thanks for illustrating my point. I know she has the internet, but there are things the internet doesn’t know —couldn’t know— that Sage has told me.”
I thought about Gran’s scone recipe, and Mum telling Sage about missing my school pantomime. I knew she was telling the truth. But I wasn’t ready to share or believe it quite yet. I needed a little more hard evidence.
“Like what?”
“Sage said Gran kept calling me ‘her little piglet’ and laughing about how I used to snort when I was a baby. Nobody outside the family ever knew Gran called me that. It wasn’t something we ever talked about with friends or posted anywhere.”
I swallowed that one down. “Even I don’t remember Gran calling you that.”
“It was before you were born, and luckily I grew out of the snorting thing. She also said Mum was really proud of how good a mother I was. Better than she was.”
“Successful businesswoman isn’t the best mother, shocker. Even I could have magicked that one up.”
“Yes, but she also said that Mum was tapping her Montblanc pen.”
Something cold settled in my stomach. Sage had brought up the Montblanc pen when we’d spoken. I’d forgotten how much Mum loved that thing. She’d carried it everywhere, claimed it was her lucky charm, never signed anything important with anything else.
“It could be a lucky guess.” But that wasn’t what my stomach said. “Successful people often have favourite pens, it’s not that unusual.”
But even as I spoke, I could hear how thin it sounded. A Montblanc, specifically?
“I thought that. But then she mentioned about the red chair in Mum’s office. The one she loved to sit in.” Katy’s voice was gentle but pointed. “Come on, Pops. What are the odds she’d pick that exact detail?”
I rubbed my temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache. Because Katy was right: what were the odds? However, acknowledging that meant accepting something I’d spent my entire adult life dismissing. It also meant I might need to listen to what Sage and Mum were saying. Could Sage help me stop Margot selling the company? Could she tell me what Mum thought about it all?
“I have to meet with her again,” I blurted.
“Sage?”
“Yeah. Mum might have some advice that I haven’t thought about yet. Some words of wisdom.” I paused. “And I need to buy a Montblanc pen.”
“You can have Mum’s.”
“I said I’d do things my way, which means I need my own pen.”
“It’s just sitting in my drawer, but suit yourself.” Katy paused. “I really do think Sage is telling the truth, because how could she not be? Plus, we hadn’t seen each other in literally years when we ran into each other again and she told me so many things about Mum. She couldn’t possibly have researched our family beforehand.”
“Like when I ran into her with you.”
“Exactly.” She cleared her throat. “Did she sit with you? Say anything that day?”
“Not much. Just a couple of things.”
