Chương 6
“Business registrations?”
“We’re checking, not predicting.”
Maya swallowed.
“And custody?”
“Nothing dramatic today unless there is an immediate safety concern.”
“There is.”
Maya’s voice sharpened.
Evelyn held up one hand.
“There may be, but a court will care about specifics.”
“He left us.”
“That matters.”
“He stole from us.”
“That may matter a lot.”
“He brought his mistress into our apartment while I was recovering from surgery.”
“That matters to you more than it necessarily matters to a judge.”
Maya’s eyes flashed.
“Great.”
“I didn’t say it was fair.”
Liam stirred in the bassinet.
The nurse came in to check Maya’s IV and glanced at the three of us with the expression of someone who had already decided we were exhausting.
“Try not to stress her,” she said.
All three of us nodded like children caught whispering in church.
After she left, Evelyn said, “I like her.”
Maya smiled despite herself.
I did not.
The hospital discharged Maya shortly after noon with antibiotics, pain medication, wound-care instructions, and a warning that made her finally stop arguing about rest.
She could not safely return to the apartment until the heat was functioning properly and she had reliable support.
That decision was easier than I expected.
She came home with me.
My house was too large for one person and had been that way since my husband died six years earlier.
I had kept his office unchanged for almost a year after the funeral, then converted it into a room where unopened retirement gifts, exercise equipment, and boxes of tax records slowly accumulated.
Now I stood in the doorway and realized it would become Liam’s room because life has no respect for what rooms were supposed to be.
Maya saw the boxes.
“You really leaned into retirement.”
“I had plans.”
“For what, an audit bunker?”
“Go lie down.”
She went.
I found an old folding crib in the basement, rejected it after reading the manufacture date, and drove to a baby store where a twenty-two-year-old employee named Jordan explained sleep-safety standards to me with the patience of a bomb technician.
I bought a new bassinet, sheets, diapers, formula, wipes, bottles, swaddles, and three things I later discovered were functionally identical burp cloths.
At checkout, the total came to less than one dinner Mark had charged to the hidden account in Miami.
I knew that because Evelyn called while I was loading the trunk.
“We found the first account.”
I closed the hatch.
“How much?”
“Currently, twenty-eight thousand and change.”
“In the account?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s what is there now.”
“What went out?”
“A lot.”
I moved away from the store entrance as a woman pushed a stroller past me.
“Tell me.”
“Not over the phone in fragments.”
“Evelyn.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be retired?”
“I am retired.”
“You’re doing a poor imitation.”
I said nothing.
She sighed.
“Fine.”
Paper shopping bags rustled in the wind beside my car.
“Your transfers landed in an account solely in Mark’s name.”
That did not surprise me.
“What did he do with them?”
“Some went into the household account Maya knew about.”
“How much?”
“Usually four thousand.”
I closed my eyes.
The lie was almost too neat.
He had shown her just enough money to make the deception believable.
“And the rest?”
“We have recurring transfers to another account that appears connected to an LLC.”
“What LLC?”
“Harbor Point Consulting.”
“His?”
“Registered six months ago.”
“Owner?”
“Mark.”
“Anyone else?”
“Not on the filing.”
“What does the company do?”
“The registration says business development and advisory services.”
“That means nothing.”
“Correct.”
“Can we see the account?”
“Not yet.”
I leaned against the car.
“What else?”
“Hotel charges, restaurants, airfare, a jewelry purchase, and multiple payments to Denise.”
“How much to Denise?”
“Regular payments of three thousand a month.”
I did the arithmetic.
“That’s on top of what I paid through the agency?”
“Yes.”
I looked across the parking lot at a man struggling to buckle a toddler into a car seat.
The toddler kept arching backward and yelling about a cracker.
The father finally ate the cracker himself.
“What were the payments labeled?”
“Consulting.”
I straightened.
“Denise is a postpartum caregiver.”
“I’m aware.”
“Any payments to Chloe?”
“Not under her name.”
“Search Harbor Point.”
“We’re already doing that.”
I hated being told to wait.
I hated more that the people around me knew it.
When I got home, Maya was asleep on the couch with Liam beside her in the new bassinet.
For one second the room looked ordinary.
Then her phone lit up on the coffee table.
Mark again.
I did not touch it.
Maya opened her eyes anyway.
“Is that him?”
“Yes.”
She stared at the ceiling.
“Did Evelyn find anything?”
I sat in the armchair across from her.
“Some.”
Her face changed.
“Tell me.”
I did.
I expected tears.
She surprised me.
“That cheap bastard.”
I almost laughed.
“What?”
“He told me we couldn’t afford the pediatric copay.”
Her voice rose.
“I spent twenty minutes arguing with the billing office because I thought our card would decline.”
She sat up too fast, winced, and pressed a pillow against her abdomen.
“Meanwhile he bought jewelry?”
“We don’t know who it was for.”
Maya stared at me.
“Mom.”
“Fine.”
She leaned back.
For a while we listened to Liam breathe.
Then she said, “I want to go to the apartment.”
“No.”
“I need clothes.”
“I’ll get them.”
“I need to see what’s there.”
“Maya.”
“I need to know what’s missing.”
That made sense.
I disliked it anyway.
“You are supposed to rest.”
“I can rest after.”
“No.”
She looked at me with the same expression she had used at seventeen when I tried to ground her for skipping school.
The difference was that she was thirty-one now, a mother, married, bleeding, and no longer required to obey me.
I rubbed my forehead.
“We go for twenty minutes.”
“Forty.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Thirty.”
May you like
“Fine.”
The apartment was warmer when we arrived because I had called the building manager before leaving the hospital.
