Chương 3
Her gaze moved from me to Darcy.
“What is she doing here?”
Darcy said nothing.
Julian’s face tightened.
“You brought a lawyer into our house?”
I was holding the blue folder against my chest.
His eyes dropped to it.
For a moment, the anger disappeared.
Something quicker and less controlled replaced it.
Fear.
“Sloan,” he said, and his voice was suddenly quiet.
I opened the folder.
The property agreement was on top.
Julian stared at his own signature.
Eleanor stepped closer.
“What is that?”
He did not answer her.
I had spent half the night imagining this moment, and in every version I had something devastating to say.
Standing there, I found I did not want the line.
I wanted the truth.
So I pulled another sheet from the folder, the note Darcy had printed that morning documenting Julian’s call about transferring ownership.
His eyes moved across the page.
Then he looked at Darcy.
“You kept notes?”
“I keep records.”
Eleanor took the page from his hand.
Her expression changed as she read.
“Julian?”
He reached for it.
She pulled it away.
“Why were you asking about this house?”
“Mom, give me that.”
“Why were you asking what happens if Sloan dies?”
His face went white.
And for the first time since I had known Eleanor, she looked at her son as if she were no longer certain whose side she was on.
Julian reached for the page again, but Eleanor folded it once and held it against her chest.
“Answer me.”
He glanced toward Darcy, then at me, as though one of us had rearranged the room while he was gone.
“It was a hypothetical question.”
Eleanor’s mouth tightened.
“You do not call an attorney about your wife’s house and ask what happens if she dies because you are feeling hypothetical.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
The word came out sharper than I had ever heard from her.
Julian rubbed both hands over his face.
“I was trying to understand our finances.”
“Six months ago?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re married, Sloan.”
“That still doesn’t answer it.”
His gaze dropped to the folder again.
Darcy remained near the study doorway with her arms loose at her sides, saying nothing, which somehow made Julian more nervous than if she had started quoting law.
Eleanor opened the folded page again.
“You asked whether ownership could be transferred to both of you.”
Julian exhaled through his nose.
“Because it should have been.”
The answer landed with an odd softness.
Not because it surprised me, but because it sounded familiar.
There it was again, the quiet assumption beneath seven years of our marriage that whatever belonged to me would eventually become ours, while whatever belonged to Julian remained temporarily complicated.
I shifted the folder beneath my arm.
“What were you planning to do with the house if I transferred it?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t call Darcy for nothing.”
“I wanted security.”
“So did I.”
His eyes flicked toward me.
“Is that what this is about now?”
I almost laughed.
“The emergency fund is forty thousand dollars lighter.”
Eleanor slowly lowered the paper.
Julian did not move.
That was answer enough.
“Julian,” she said.
He looked at her, and for the first time that morning I saw something close to panic settle fully into his face.
“It isn’t what she thinks.”
“I haven’t told you what I think.”
His jaw shifted.
“You went through my accounts.”
“Our accounts.”
“My credit card.”
“The card I paid off twice last year.”
“That doesn’t give you permission to spy on me.”
Darcy finally spoke.
“Sloan accessed accounts on which she is an authorized holder.”
Julian snapped his head toward her.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I know.”
Darcy’s voice stayed flat.
“That rarely prevents me from hearing.”
Eleanor looked from one of us to the other.
“What forty thousand dollars?”
Julian shoved his keys into his pocket.
“We’re not doing this in front of my mother.”
“You brought your mother here,” I said.
“She came because you were acting insane.”
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed.
“I came because you told me Sloan was holding my trip money hostage.”
Julian stared at her.
She stared back.
A small silence opened between them.
I had never seen Eleanor discover in real time that she had been used as scenery.
It did not make her kinder.
It made her furious.
“You said the money was already set aside.”
“It was supposed to be.”
“You said Sloan had agreed months ago.”
“I said she knew about the trip.”
“You said she was being spiteful because we argued.”
Julian’s face darkened.
“Can everybody stop repeating every damn thing I said?”
“No,” Eleanor said.
He turned on her.
She did not flinch.
The florist card still sat on the kitchen island behind her.
Have an unforgettable trip, Mom.
Love, J.
She seemed to notice it too.
Her expression changed, not toward gratitude but embarrassment.
She picked up her handbag.
“I’m going home.”
“Mom, wait.”
“I am seventy-one years old.”
“I know.”
“Then stop speaking to me like I’m too stupid to notice when a story changes.”
She walked toward the front door, then stopped beside me.
For years, Eleanor had smelled like expensive powder and whatever floral perfume she bought in the duty-free shop whenever she traveled.
That morning there was something else beneath it, faintly medicinal.
She looked at the fading redness near my collar.
Her eyes stayed there a second too long.
“I didn’t know he took money,” she said.
I believed that much.
It did not erase the years of entitlement.
It did not erase yesterday.
But I believed her.
“I know.”
She nodded once.
Then she left.
Julian watched the door close.
His shoulders dropped.
The change in him was almost startling.
May you like
Without Eleanor there, he seemed less like the angry man who had ordered me out and more like someone exhausted from holding several lies in place at once.
He walked to the kitchen island and braced both hands against it.
