“Did you request an autopsy?”
Diana shook her head. “Daddy was a dignified man. That wouldn’t have been to his liking. And the medical director at the nursing home didn’t recommend it. He said heart failure is common after multiple strokes. I suppose I was holding an earlier image of him, of a stronger, healthier man. His time had come.”
Diana began to dissect her salad, exiling the croutons to the edge of the plate. She cut a single leaf of lettuce, raised it to her mouth, and took a dainty nibble, like a rabbit with a square-cut diamond ring.
“The last time we talked, you mentioned you’d said only a little to your father about this project. Is it possible he heard more than he let on? That he was supporting your project, even before he had the details?”
Diana’s fork froze over her salad.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I found the letter of intent you mentioned, at the land trust.” Lana pulled from her purse a printed photograph of the LOI and placed it on the table facing Diana. She held one finger to it, pinning it between them. Then she kept talking. “I spoke with an expert about it. This letter is suggestive, but it isn’t binding. Your father might have changed his mind. Look at this.”
Lana put the handwritten note on the table next to the legal document, the one addressed to Victor about a project moving forward without the land trust. She watched Diana’s eyes shift back and forth across the block printing, taking it in.
“Do you think this note is from your father?” Lana asked. “Is it possible he abandoned his conservation plans to support you instead?”
Diana leaned closer to the scrap of paper, reading aloud the words scrawled there. “‘Someone close to my heart has approached me with a bold vision for a project too big to live at the land trust.’”
Lana could see the hunger in her eyes.
Then Diana sat up again, very straight. “I wish I could say yes. But it’s not Daddy’s handwriting. That kind of flowery language, the idea that he would describe me as someone close to his heart . . . that wasn’t him.”
“Could it be Ricardo Cruz?”
Diana looked at Lana sharply. “How would I know what his writing looks like?”
“My mistake.” Lana folded the papers carefully and slid them back into her purse. “I’m just trying to understand what you might be up against in pursuing your wellness ranch. What we might be up against.” Lana took a sip of water. “As I understand it, five years ago, your father promised to donate the development rights to the land trust via a conservation easement. But in the last six months, when Victor assigned Ricardo Cruz to finalize the deal, something changed. Your father and Ricardo were spending a lot of time together. If your father had new intentions for the ranch—”
“I’m not asking you to determine my father’s intentions. I’m asking you to help me carry on his legacy.” Diana threw back her shoulders and started cutting another small, fussy bite of lettuce. “Look, I know Victor Morales hired the boy and sent him out to the ranch to talk to Daddy about that easement. But clearly nothing came of it.”
Or perhaps something different came of it, something Diana didn’t know about or didn’t want to admit. “Did you ever see him with your father?”
“Ricardo? Only once.” Diana looked out the window with a hopeful expression, as if the young man might be outside tending the garden. “Daddy would talk about him sometimes, at the nursing home. It brought him back to old times. I can just imagine them mucking out the stalls together, checking on the swallow boxes.”
“What do you mean, old times?”
“Surely you know the story by now,” Diana said.
Lana lifted her eyebrows in invitation.
“I was twenty-two when my mother died,” Diana said. “There was a terrible fire in the old barn. An accident, of course. My mother was trapped. Alejandro Cruz, Ricardo’s father, died as well. But Ricardo’s mother, Sofia, she was pregnant at the time—she made it out. Alejandro had just moved her up to the ranch with him from Fresno. When Ricardo was born, everyone called him the miracle baby. Daddy said he was the only good thing to come out of the fire.”
“Did you agree?”
Diana’s eyes shot to the window again. “I was overseas when Ricardo was born. But when my fiancé . . . when I came home . . . Ricardo was there. He and Sofia lived in the house. With Daddy and Martin.”
“That must have been a surprise,” Lana ventured.