Chương 6
I stared at the screen.
My first instinct was anger.
My second was fear.
My third was something I hated admitting.
Curiosity.
Because suddenly the story Rowan had built had a missing piece.
And someone else had it.
I called Hannah.
She answered quickly.
“Everything okay?”
“No.”
I walked into the living room.
“I received messages from Elise.”
A pause.
“His assistant?”
“Yes.”
“Do not delete them.”
“I won’t.”
“Forward them to me.”
I did.
The little progress bar moved across the screen.
A strange thing about evidence was that it never looked important while you were collecting it.
A text message.
A receipt.
A calendar entry.
Just pieces of ordinary life.
It was only later that people decided which pieces mattered.
Hannah called back ten minutes later.
“I read them.”
“And?”
“I need to be careful here.”
My stomach tightened.
“I hate when people say that.”
“I know.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means we don’t know what Elise knows or why she is telling you now.”
“She admitted she caused this.”
“She admitted she said something.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No.”
Hannah’s voice remained calm.
“It isn’t.”
I hated that she was right.
“What should I do?”
“Keep communicating only through text if you respond.”
“Why?”
“Because written statements are easier to preserve.”
The practical nature of the advice felt almost cruel.
My marriage was collapsing.
My attorney was talking about preserving messages.
But that was reality.
Feelings mattered.
Records mattered too.
After we ended the call, Elise sent another message.
Can we meet?
I showed Maya.
She immediately shook her head.
“No.”
“I need answers.”
“You need protection.”
“She knows something.”
“She might.”
I looked at the screen.
“What if she’s the only person who can explain what happened?”
Maya rubbed her forehead.
“I hate that I understand why you want to go.”
“I’m not asking you to like it.”
“I know.”
She looked tired.
Not annoyed.
Just tired.
That was the thing about family.
They carried pieces of your pain even when they had no way to remove it.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“No.”
“Nora.”
“I need to do this alone.”
Maya looked at me for a long moment.
“You always say that when you’re hurt.”
I looked away.
“Because I don’t want people seeing me fall apart.”
“You think I haven’t seen you fall apart before?”
That stopped me.
She smiled sadly.
“When you were twenty-three and got rejected from that design job, you cried into a bowl of cereal.”
I laughed despite myself.
“That was different.”
“You were wearing pajamas.”
“I was comfortable.”
“You were miserable.”
I smiled.
A real one.
Small.
Brief.
But real.
Maya pointed at me.
“There.”
“What?”
“That.”
“What?”
“You’re still in there.”
The next morning, I met Elise at a small coffee shop two miles from my sister’s house.
Public.
Quiet.
Safe.
The kind of place where nobody noticed anyone because everyone was busy pretending not to watch each other.
Elise was already there.
She looked different without the apartment around her.
Less certain.
More human.
She stood when I approached.
“I wasn’t sure you would come.”
“I almost didn’t.”
She nodded.
“That would have been fair.”
I sat across from her.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then she said, “I’m sorry.”
I looked at her.
“Don’t.”
Her expression changed.
“Don’t apologize before telling me the truth.”
She lowered her eyes.
“Okay.”
A server walked by.
Someone laughed near the window.
A man at the counter argued quietly about a missing order.
The world continued around us.
Elise folded her hands.
“Six months ago, Rowan asked me to look into something.”
“What?”
She swallowed.
“A concern.”
“That sounds like something a lawyer would say.”
“I know.”
“What concern?”
She looked directly at me.
“He thought you were hiding something.”
The anger returned.
“From him?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Elise hesitated.
Then she reached into her bag.
Not dramatically.
Not like a movie.
Just a nervous person taking out something she had been carrying.
She placed a small envelope on the table.
“I found this.”
I looked at it.
“What is it?”
“Something Rowan never saw.”
I did not touch it.
“What is inside?”
Elise looked at the envelope.
Then back at me.
“Something that changes why he thinks the baby isn’t his.”
My heart started beating faster.
“Why?”
Her voice became quieter.
“Because Rowan was not the first person who suspected you were keeping a secret.”
I stared at her.
“What secret?”
Elise pushed the envelope toward me.
“The one you never told him.”
I looked down at the envelope.
And for the first time since Rowan threw me out, I wondered if there was a part of my own story that I had forgotten.
I looked down at the envelope.
The paper was ordinary.
That almost made it worse.
Important things in life rarely arrived looking important.
They came as emails you almost ignored.
Voicemails you almost deleted.
Pieces of paper someone left on a table while you were busy making dinner.
I touched the corner of the envelope but did not open it.
“What is this?”
Elise looked uncomfortable.
“A letter.”
“From who?”
She hesitated.
“Your doctor.”
My hand stopped.
“What?”
“It was in a file Rowan asked me to review.”
The noise of the coffee shop seemed to disappear.
“What file?”
Elise looked around before answering.
“Insurance records.”
I stared at her.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I at first.”
“Then explain.”
She swallowed.
“Rowan asked me to organize documents related to the pregnancy.”
“Why would you have access to that?”
“Because he asked me to.”
The answer was simple.
Too simple.
I looked at the envelope again.
“You went through my medical information?”
Her face changed.
Shame.
Real shame.
“Yes.”
Anger rose immediately.
Not the dramatic kind.
The exhausted kind.
The kind that comes when you realize someone crossed a line you never imagined they would cross.
“That was private.”
“I know.”
“No, you know now.”
She looked down.
May you like
“You’re right.”
That answer surprised me.
