Chương 5
Daniel shook his head once, not as an instruction to lie, but as a warning to give nothing away.
“Why would you ask me that?”
“Emily, come home.”
My daughter shifted hard beneath my ribs.
“What happened?”
“Just come home.”
“No.”
His breathing changed.
Then he lowered his voice.
“I got a call from Halpern.”
I looked at Daniel.
“What did they want?”
“They’re asking questions.”
“About what?”
A long silence followed.
When Ethan finally answered, the anger had disappeared.
For the first time since I had opened his office door, my husband sounded afraid.
“About you.”
I stared at the phone as if Ethan had said my name in a language I no longer understood.
“What about me?”
“They asked whether you were still involved with the company.”
Daniel’s expression sharpened.
I turned slightly away from him.
“What did you say?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“The truth would be a nice experiment.”
“Emily, this isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing.”
Ethan lowered his voice further.
“They asked whether certain relationships were yours before they were mine.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Were they?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It suddenly feels very much like the point.”
“You talked to someone.”
“No.”
“Then why is Halpern calling me less than twelve hours after you threaten to blow up our marriage?”
“I didn’t threaten anything.”
“You called Daniel.”
My eyes went to Daniel again.
He had stopped touching his coffee.
“How do you know that?”
Silence.
Not long.
Just long enough.
“Ethan?”
“I have people who tell me things.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“Come home.”
“No.”
“Emily, please.”
The word stopped me.
Ethan rarely said please when he was frightened.
He negotiated.
He reframed.
He persuaded until the other person forgot what they had originally wanted.
Please was what remained when he had no leverage.
“What did Halpern ask exactly?”
“They want to know whether you authorized me to represent your prior client relationships as part of Cole Systems’ strategic network.”
Daniel looked up sharply.
I felt something cold move through me.
“Did I?”
“Don’t do this on the phone.”
“That’s a yes or no question.”
“They’re making this sound like something it isn’t.”
“That wasn’t my question either.”
“Emily.”
“Did I authorize you?”
His breath hit the receiver.
“No.”
The coffee shop kept moving around me.
A barista called someone’s name.
A child near the front dropped a straw wrapper and crawled under the table to retrieve it.
Daniel reached slowly for his legal pad.
I lifted one finger to stop him.
“What exactly did you tell them I authorized?”
“Nothing false.”
“You just said I didn’t authorize it.”
“I said you didn’t formally authorize it.”
My stomach tightened.
Not pain.
Something lower and harder.
I shifted in my chair.
Daniel noticed.
“You okay?” he mouthed.
I nodded.
Ethan continued.
“You stepped away from the business world.”
“That didn’t transfer my identity to you.”
“I never said it did.”
“Then what did you say?”
“That we were married and that our networks overlapped.”
“Our networks.”
“That is true.”
“Did you tell anyone I had endorsed deals I had never seen?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
My pulse jumped.
“Which deals?”
“What?”
“You answered before I asked about any specific deal.”
“Because I know where you’re going with this.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“Please come home.”
“I’m going to ask you once more.”
Daniel was writing now.
He kept his head down, but I could see the pressure of the pen against the paper.
“Did you ever tell an investor, client, lender, board member, or employee that I had reviewed or supported something I had not actually reviewed or supported?”
Ethan said nothing.
My daughter shifted again.
A dull ache pressed across my lower back.
“Ethan.”
“I used your name sometimes.”
The room seemed to tilt very slightly.
“How?”
“To reassure people.”
“How?”
“Emily, everybody knew who you were.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“If someone was nervous about me, I might mention that you knew the space.”
“You might mention.”
“Yes.”
“That I knew the space, or that I knew the deal?”
Another silence.
Then he said, “It depended.”
I closed my eyes.
Daniel’s pen stopped.
“Give me one example.”
“I’m not doing an audit with you while you’re sitting with a man who has hated me since the day we met.”
Daniel’s eyebrows lifted.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it.
“He didn’t hate you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I was there.”
“Not for everything.”
That sentence lodged somewhere I could not immediately examine.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Daniel has never been objective about us.”
Daniel looked away toward the window.
Interesting.
Not defensive.
Not surprised.
Just away.
I filed it for later.
“This is not about Daniel.”
“You called him at one thirty in the morning.”
My skin prickled.
“How do you know what time I called him?”
Ethan stopped breathing for a beat.
Daniel looked back at me.
“Ethan?”
“I saw you get out of bed.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“What?”
“You were asleep.”
“I woke up.”
“You didn’t follow me.”
“No.”
“You didn’t ask who I called.”
“I didn’t need to.”
My pulse accelerated.
Daniel held out his hand.
I ignored it.
“How did you know?”
“I checked the phone account.”
The answer was plausible.
Too plausible.
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Before or after Halpern called?”
“After.”
“What time did Halpern call?”
“Emily, stop.”
“What time?”
“About eight.”
I looked at Daniel.
We had met at eight thirty.
Halpern had called Ethan before I sat down with Daniel.
Before Daniel and I discussed a single investor.
Before I showed him a single email.
“Who called you from Halpern?”
Ethan exhaled.
“Martin Hale.”
Daniel wrote the name down.
I knew Martin.
Not well.
He had been on the edge of my professional circle years ago, the kind of man who never forgot who had introduced whom.
“Why would Martin call you at eight in the morning?”
May you like
“I don’t know.”
“You said he was asking questions.”
