Chương 4
“Can we not do this with Darcy standing here?”
“No.”
“Sloan.”
“No.”
He looked down.
The room hummed with the refrigerator and the distant sound of a landscaping crew somewhere outside.
A leaf blower started, stopped, then started again.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Julian picked up the florist card, read his own handwriting, and tore it cleanly in half.
“What do you want to know?”
The question frightened me more than his shouting had.
“All of it.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Fine.”
I set the folder on the island.
“Where did the forty thousand go?”
He stared at the two halves of the card in his hand.
“Debt.”
“What debt?”
“My debt.”
I waited.
He sat on one of the stools.
“After the company failed, there were things I didn’t tell you.”
“I knew about the business loans.”
“Not all of them.”
Darcy’s eyes sharpened.
Julian saw it and swore under his breath.
“I didn’t commit a crime.”
“That is an unusually specific thing to say before anyone asks,” Darcy said.
He ignored her.
“I personally guaranteed part of a line of credit.”
My stomach tightened.
“How much?”
“It started at eighty-five.”
“Thousand?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean started?”
“Interest.”
I gripped the edge of the island.
“You told me the bankruptcy cleared everything connected to the company.”
“Most of it.”
“You looked me in the face and said there was nothing else.”
“I was embarrassed.”
I stared at him.
He gave a humorless laugh.
“There, does that help?”
“No.”
“I had a company with twelve employees, Sloan.”
His voice rose, then dropped again.
“I had people calling me for answers while I was googling whether I could make payroll.”
“You could have told me.”
“And then what?”
“Then I would have known.”
“That’s exactly what I couldn’t stand.”
He looked at me finally.
“You knowing.”
The admission hung there without decoration.
For once, he was not trying to make himself sound noble.
He simply looked ashamed.
I hated how much easier it would have been if he had looked monstrous.
“What happened to the forty thousand?”
“I paid part of it.”
“To whom?”
“A private lender.”
Darcy stepped closer.
“Name.”
Julian’s mouth tightened.
“This isn’t a deposition.”
“No, but if you transferred marital funds to satisfy an undisclosed personal obligation, the name matters.”
He rubbed his thumb across his palm.
“Crescent Bridge Capital.”
Darcy took out her phone and made a note.
I looked at him.
“And the jewelry?”
He went still.
There it was.
Not fear this time.
Guilt.
My chest tightened so quickly that I had to force myself to breathe normally.
“Who is she?”
Julian looked toward the window.
“Her name is Tessa.”
The landscaping crew outside abruptly shut off the leaf blower.
The silence that followed seemed obscene.
Darcy glanced at me but did not speak.
I looked at a spot on the marble where yesterday’s tea had stained the grout faintly brown.
“How long?”
“It’s not what you think.”
I closed my eyes.
“Do not say that.”
“It wasn’t a relationship.”
“You bought her jewelry.”
“It was one bracelet.”
I laughed once.
Julian winced.
“One bracelet is apparently the legal threshold for emotional innocence.”
“Sloan.”
“How long?”
He swallowed.
“Four months.”
The answer should have broken something.
Instead, I noticed that one cabinet door was slightly crooked.
Julian had promised to fix that hinge in March.
I had reminded him twice, then stopped.
Four months.
March.
I stared at the cabinet until the edges blurred.
Darcy touched my elbow.
I pulled away without meaning to.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I said I’m fine.”
The sharpness in my voice surprised all three of us.
Darcy took one step back.
Julian looked almost relieved to see me angry.
Maybe anger was a language he knew how to answer.
He stood.
“Tessa was a consultant.”
“Was?”
“She helped with a project.”
“At the company you work for now?”
“Yes.”
“You told me your Thursdays were client meetings.”
“Some of them were.”
“Were the hotel nights client meetings?”
He looked at the floor.
My throat felt raw.
“How many?”
“Three.”
I waited.
“Three nights?”
“Yes.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
His silence answered first.
Then he said, “Yes.”
The word was quiet.
I had imagined discovering an affair before.
Everyone probably does at least once in a marriage, usually during some stupid disagreement when the mind reaches for the most efficient possible injury.
In those imagined versions, I screamed.
I threw something.
I demanded details.
The real moment was smaller.
I pulled out a stool and sat because my knees felt unreliable.
Julian began talking.
“I ended it.”
I held up one hand.
He stopped.
The refrigerator compressor clicked off.
From somewhere upstairs came the faint buzz of his phone charging on the bedroom dresser, though I knew that was impossible because the phone was in his pocket.
My mind had apparently begun inventing ordinary sounds.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Before or after I found the statements?”
“You never told me you found anything.”
“Before or after the forty-thousand-dollar withdrawal?”
His jaw tightened.
“After.”
I looked at Darcy.
She was watching Julian, not me.
“The hotel charges were before that,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And the bracelet?”
“Yes.”
“And you ended it three weeks ago.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation told me the answer mattered.
“She wanted me to leave you.”
I almost smiled.
Of course she did.
There was something embarrassingly conventional about it.
A married man who complained about his marriage to another woman until the other woman eventually believed the marriage was already over.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
He looked at me.
“Does that distinction help you right now?”
“Yes.”
His face tightened.
“I wouldn’t.”
I nodded.
That hurt differently.
Not better.
Just differently.
Darcy closed her notebook.
“We should stop.”
Julian looked at her.
“I’m finally answering.”
“You are.”
May you like
She turned to me.
“But Sloan doesn’t have to absorb every available fact before breakfast.”
