Chương 6
“Do you want me to burn it?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s evidence.”
“Do you want me to burn something else?”
Catherine looked around the room. The urge was stronger than she wanted to admit.
“Make tea,” she said.
“That is disappointingly healthy.”
“It’s not forgiveness. I’m thirsty.”
While Rebecca filled the kettle, Catherine entered the nursery.
Michael had assembled the crib himself after refusing the delivery company’s installation fee on principle. He had spent four hours on the floor, muttering at the instructions, then discovered one side was backward. Catherine had taken a photograph of him sitting among the pieces with an Allen wrench between his teeth.
The photograph still rested on the bookshelf.
She turned it facedown.
Sophie woke and began to fuss. Catherine lifted her carefully, wincing as the baby’s weight pressed against her incision. The nursery chair creaked when she sat.
For ten minutes, there was no affair, no attorney, no board, no hospital report. There was only a hungry infant who became furious when the blanket touched her ear.
Rebecca brought tea and set it on the floor because every other surface was covered with bottles, wipes, or folded cloths.
“You should sleep,” Rebecca said.
“I keep hearing the recording when I close my eyes.”
“Delete it.”
“I might need it.”
“Then give it to the lawyer and delete it from your phone.”
Catherine looked at Sophie’s dark curls beneath the cap. “It’s the last honest thing anyone said to me that night.”
“Amber wasn’t being honest. She was being cruel.”
“She was honest about what Michael had made me to both of them.”
Rebecca sat on the rug. “You are not whatever story a cheating man told his assistant.”
Catherine took a sip of tea. It had gone bitter from steeping too long.
“What if I knew?” she asked.
“Knew what?”
“That there was someone.”
Rebecca did not answer immediately.
Catherine watched her daughter’s fist open and close. “He stopped leaving his phone on the counter. He bought new shirts. He began taking calls in the hallway. I noticed, and I decided the company was under pressure.”
“That isn’t knowing.”
“I asked him once whether there was anything I should worry about. He smiled and said only interest rates.”
“You trusted your husband.”
“I protected my life.”
Rebecca leaned back against the crib. “Those can look the same from inside.”
That evening, Amber sent Catherine an email.
The subject line read: I am sorry.
Catherine stared at it for nearly an hour before forwarding it unopened to Priya.
Priya called five minutes later.
“It contains attachments,” she said.
“What kind?”
“Messages. Travel confirmations. A copy of an apartment lease.”
Catherine’s hand tightened around the phone. “Whose lease?”
“Amber’s. The unit is in River North. Harrison House Group is listed as guarantor.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Amber says Michael arranged it as temporary executive housing.”
“She lives in Lincoln Park.”
“Apparently she intended to move.”
“With him?”
“The email is not clear.”
Catherine looked through the glass doors toward the balcony. The city was bright below, each window holding a life that had not collapsed this week.
“What does she want?”
“To meet.”
“No.”
“She claims Michael misrepresented the state of your marriage and instructed her to help prepare corporate documents concerning your medical leave.”
Catherine stood too quickly. Pain forced her back into the chair.
“What documents?”
“She attached drafts. I am reviewing them.”
“Send them.”
“I will send what is relevant after preserving the originals.”
“Priya.”
“You are recovering from surgery, you have slept perhaps four hours in three days, and you are holding a newborn while asking to read documents designed to remove you from control of your company. Give me twenty minutes.”
Catherine pressed her lips together.
Priya’s voice softened by half a degree. “You hired me because you need one person who will not obey your panic.”
“I’m not panicking.”
“Then twenty minutes will be survivable.”
The documents arrived thirty-four minutes later.
They were drafts of board resolutions authorizing Michael to make unilateral operating decisions during Catherine’s maternity leave. One version described her leave as indefinite. Another stated that health complications might impair her ability to fulfill executive responsibilities.
Catherine read the sentence three times.
The file metadata showed Amber had created the first draft six weeks earlier.
A message from Michael accompanied it.
Need options if C can’t function after delivery. Keep this discreet. Nolan will overreact if he thinks it’s permanent.
Another message followed.
She’s been erratic lately. We may need flexibility before she decides she wants to redesign everything from bed.
Catherine’s stomach turned.
She had been exhausted six weeks earlier. Her ankles had swollen, and she had cried in the office after a contractor installed the wrong stone in seventy-three bathrooms. She had apologized to the team the next morning. Michael had brought her a blueberry muffin and told her she was allowed to be human.
Then he had described her as unable to function.
Rebecca found Catherine on the nursery floor beside the chair, Sophie sleeping against her chest.
“What happened?”
Catherine handed her the phone.
Rebecca read the messages. “That bastard.”
“He was going to remove me.”
“He was preparing to.”
“While I was giving birth.”
Rebecca crouched. “Can you stand?”
Catherine stared at the crib. “My father mortgaged his house for our first building.”
“I know.”
“I designed every room in that place. Michael wanted beige carpet because it was cheaper.”
“I remember the carpet.”
“He said the company was ours.”
Rebecca took Sophie gently, then helped Catherine to her feet. “It still is.”
Catherine slept for ninety minutes and woke convinced someone had taken the baby.
She stumbled into the hallway, one hand against the wall, calling Sophie’s name. Rebecca appeared from the kitchen holding the infant and a bottle.
“She’s here.”
Catherine stopped.
Her heart beat so hard she could feel it in her incision. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you needed sleep.”
May you like
“You took her.”
“I fed her ten feet away.”
