Chương 5
“Walter, look at me.”
The elevator doors opened.
He stepped inside.
Margaret said, “Was Jenna the only one?”
His hand hovered near the button.
For the first time that afternoon, Walter did not try to lie.
“No.”
The doors closed between them.
Margaret remained in the hallway after the elevator carried Walter away, staring at the polished metal doors until her own reflection sharpened in them.
Samuel was still speaking through the phone, but for several seconds his words seemed to come from another floor.
“Mom, are you there?”
She pressed the phone harder to her ear.
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Margaret looked toward the ceiling.
A sprinkler head protruded above her like a tiny white button.
“He said Jenna wasn’t the only one.”
Samuel went quiet.
The hallway smelled faintly of someone’s dinner, garlic and onions warming in an apartment farther down.
Margaret suddenly wanted to go home and check the chicken she had left thawing, which was such a stupid thought that she nearly laughed.
“Don’t drive,” Samuel said.
“I’m perfectly capable of driving.”
“You just found Dad cheating on you.”
“I’m aware.”
“And you hit him.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“You heard that?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, congratulations, Samuel, apparently we’re finally a family that communicates.”
He did not laugh.
Neither did she.
“I’m ten minutes away,” he said.
Margaret glanced at the apartment door behind her.
“I should wait outside.”
“You can go back in.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“I shouldn’t have a key.”
Samuel sighed.
“That is not the biggest issue right now.”
“It is one of them.”
She walked back into the apartment, retrieved the duplicate key from the bedroom dresser, then returned to the hallway and pulled the door shut behind her.
She slid the key under the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving it back.”
“You could just hand it to me.”
“I’m done having things I’m not supposed to have.”
Samuel was silent for a beat.
“Okay.”
Margaret sat on the carpeted floor with her back against the wall.
At sixty-one, getting down was easier than getting up, and under ordinary circumstances she would have avoided it.
Today ordinary dignity had become difficult to defend.
“How many accounts do your father and I have?” she asked.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You said there were transfers.”
“From the line of credit.”
“To where?”
“One was to an account with his name on it.”
“One?”
“There were several.”
“How many?”
“I saw four transfers.”
“For how much?”
“Mom.”
“How much?”
Samuel hesitated.
“About twenty-six thousand total.”
Margaret closed her eyes.
That matched the difference too neatly.
Eighty-six had become a little over a hundred and twelve.
The missing amount had not been interest alone.
“Do you have copies?”
“I took photos of the statement.”
“Send them.”
“Not while you’re sitting alone in a hallway.”
“Samuel.”
“Fine.”
Her phone buzzed a few seconds later.
Four photographs appeared in their message thread.
Margaret opened the first.
She enlarged the image with two fingers.
The statement was from a lender she recognized only because their mortgage had briefly been serviced by the same bank years ago.
Walter Ellis and Margaret Ellis appeared at the top.
Margaret stared at her own printed name.
There was something obscene about seeing it there.
A debt she had never agreed to had been arranged politely enough to spell her name correctly.
“Mom?”
“I’m looking.”
The first large withdrawal had gone to an LLC.
Margaret read the name twice.
Northline Wellness Holdings.
“That was Chloe’s company?”
“Yes.”
The next transfer went to an account ending in 4481.
Walter Ellis.
The next went to another account ending in 9026.
Walter Ellis.
The third went to something called Lakeshore Consulting Services.
“Samuel, what is Lakeshore Consulting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That it was business.”
“Business?”
“He got defensive.”
Margaret scrolled.
The dates mattered.
The first private withdrawal had occurred seven months ago.
The second five months ago.
The third six weeks ago.
Jenna had said the affair began eight months earlier.
Margaret’s thumb stopped moving.
“Did you know about Jenna before today?”
“No.”
“Think before you answer.”
“I am thinking.”
“Did you ever see your father with a woman you didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Did he ever ask you to cover for him?”
“No.”
“Did he ever tell you not to mention where he’d been?”
Samuel breathed out.
“Once.”
Margaret’s back stiffened against the wall.
“When?”
“Maybe two months ago.”
“What happened?”
“He said he’d stopped by the apartment to check a faucet because I told him it was leaking.”
Margaret looked at the closed door.
“There was a leak?”
“A small one.”
“And?”
“He texted me later and said he’d fixed it.”
“And?”
“Then Chloe asked why Dad’s car had been in the garage for almost three hours.”
Margaret’s fingers went cold.
“What did you tell her?”
“That he was helping me with something.”
“Why?”
“Because that was true, technically.”
Margaret lowered the phone.
The phrase sounded like Walter.
Technically.
A word that could hide a body if you stacked enough paperwork over it.
“You covered for him.”
“I didn’t know what I was covering.”
“I know.”
She said it too quickly.
Samuel heard that.
“I really didn’t.”
“I said I know.”
“You don’t sound like you know.”
Margaret rubbed her forehead.
“I don’t know what I know anymore.”
A door opened across the hallway.
An elderly man in slippers stepped out carrying a small bag of trash.
He glanced at Margaret sitting on the floor, hesitated, and then nodded politely.
“You all right?”
Margaret almost said yes.
Habit formed the word before honesty stopped it.
“No.”
The man considered that.
“Need me to call somebody?”
“My son’s coming.”
“All right.”
He shuffled toward the trash room without asking anything else.
Margaret watched him go.
That small mercy nearly broke her.
Samuel said, “Who was that?”
“A neighbor.”
“Stay where you are.”
“Stop ordering me around.”
May you like
“I’m trying to help.”
“You and your father have done enough helping.”
