Chương 10
“Did Gideon mention money?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
“He said he needed time to replace it.”
“Replace what?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Did he ask you for money?”
“No.”
“Did he ask you to lie about anything else?”
“Yes.”
I stood again.
“What?”
“He wanted me to say he had never accessed my email without permission.”
I stopped moving.
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I left my laptop logged in.”
“That’s all?”
“At first.”
“What happened later?”
“He changed my password.”
I looked back through the sliding door.
Nadine was at the kitchen table with her laptop open.
Roger slept with one red shoe still on.
“Did he ever impersonate you online?”
“He sent messages from my account.”
“To whom?”
“My sister.”
I swallowed.
“What kind of messages?”
“Ones that made me look unstable.”
My mouth went dry.
“Like what?”
“He wrote that I didn’t know if I could keep taking care of Lily.”
I pressed a hand against my forehead.
“And your sister believed it?”
“For about six hours.”
“What changed?”
“I called her.”
“That simple?”
“No.”
Claire paused.
“She had already forwarded the message to my mother.”
I heard a faint sound in the background on her end, maybe a cabinet closing.
“Gideon liked things that spread before I knew they existed.”
That sentence sat heavily between us.
“Did you keep evidence?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“As much as I could.”
“Would you send it to me?”
Silence followed.
I hated myself for asking before she answered.
This woman did not owe me rescue.
She had already spent years cleaning up the consequences of the same man I had married willingly.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For becoming another person calling you because of him.”
Claire was quiet.
Then she said, “That part isn’t your fault.”
I looked at Roger through the glass.
“Did he ever hurt Lily?”
“Not physically.”
“Did he neglect her?”
“Sometimes.”
“What does sometimes mean?”
“It means he could be attentive when being attentive made him feel like a good father.”
I said nothing.
“He loved taking her places,” Claire continued.
“Zoo, aquarium, park, birthday parties.”
“But?”
“He hated the boring parts.”
“What boring parts?”
“Baths, bedtime, stomach bugs, getting her dressed, packing lunches, waiting for her to finish eating.”
My throat tightened.
Kitchen floor.
Tablet dead.
Daddy said wait.
“Did he ever leave her alone?”
“Once.”
“How old?”
“Three.”
“For how long?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe thirty.”
“Where was he?”
“In the garage with a neighbor.”
“That’s all?”
“That was enough.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not trying to scare you.”
“I know.”
“Actually, maybe I am a little.”
Her honesty startled me.
“I spent years thinking if I had warned the next woman, maybe something would have been different.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t know there was a next woman.”
“Diane knew.”
“Yes.”
“And said nothing.”
“Yes.”
I rubbed my thumb along a crack in the plastic chair.
“Claire, did Gideon ever open anything under Lily’s name?”
The silence that followed was longer than any before it.
“Yes.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“A store card.”
“In a three-year-old’s name?”
“He used her Social Security number.”
“Jesus.”
“It got flagged.”
“What happened?”
“He said it was an error.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the mailing address was his office.”
I closed my eyes.
My mind went to Roger’s Social Security card.
It was kept in the same document box as his birth certificate.
The birth certificate had been in the suitcase.
The Social Security card had not.
“Claire, I need to call you back.”
“What happened?”
“I have to check something.”
“Bernice.”
“Yes?”
“Before you do anything, freeze Roger’s credit.”
My skin went cold despite the heat.
“I’m going to.”
“And yours.”
“Yes.”
“And don’t tell Gideon what you find.”
I looked through the glass again.
Nadine was watching me now.
“Why?”
“Because when I found the first account, he closed three others before I could document them.”
The call ended two minutes later after Claire agreed to send copies of what she still had.
I went inside.
Nadine took one look at my face and closed her laptop.
“What now?”
“Roger’s Social Security card.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t have it.”
“Is it at the house?”
“It was supposed to be with the birth certificate.”
Nadine stood.
“Was it there?”
“No.”
Roger stirred on the couch.
We both lowered our voices.
“I need to freeze his credit.”
“Can you do that for a five-year-old?”
“Yes.”
“You know how?”
“No.”
“That makes two of us.”
She opened her laptop again.
I stopped her.
“No internet searches on your Wi-Fi yet.”
She looked at me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Claire said Gideon accessed her email and changed passwords.”
“He can’t access my network.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
Nadine stared at me for a second.
Then she unplugged the router.
“That was probably excessive.”
“Maybe.”
“My daughter is going to think civilization ended.”
“I’ll apologize.”
“You can explain it when she starts circling the kitchen looking for signal.”
We used cellular data instead.
The process for freezing a minor’s credit was slower than I wanted and involved documents I did not have with me.
I could start fraud alerts for myself immediately.
I did.
Then I checked my credit report.
The first unfamiliar account appeared halfway down the page.
A credit card opened eight months earlier.
Balance: six thousand four hundred and twelve dollars.
I stopped breathing.
“Nadine.”
She came around the table.
“What?”
I pointed.
Her face changed.
“That’s not yours?”
“No.”
Another account appeared beneath it.
Personal loan.
Opened four months earlier.
Balance: eleven thousand eight hundred dollars.
Another.
Retail financing.
Three thousand two hundred.
Another.
A line of credit under my name with an address I did not recognize.
I counted twice.
Then a third time.
Twenty-nine thousand dollars outside the home-equity line.
Nadine sat beside me.
“Okay.”
I laughed.
It came out wrong.
“What exactly is okay?”
“Nothing.”
May you like
“Excellent.”
“I meant okay as in we now know something concrete.”
