Chương 14
Then he said something I did not expect.
“Victor wasn’t only blackmailing Mom.”
I waited.
Godfrey looked back at me.
“He was blackmailing me too.”
“About what?”
His shoulders dropped.
“The account in Phedra’s name.”
I felt every muscle in my body lock.
He watched my face.
Then his own changed.
“You know about it.”
I said nothing.
He whispered, “Damian.”
I closed the file.
For the first time since coming home, the trap had stopped being mine.
I kept my hands flat on the closed file.
“What does Victor know?”
Godfrey looked toward the dark shop floor.
“Everything I did.”
“That narrows it down beautifully.”
He flinched at the sarcasm.
“I opened the account.”
“In Phedra’s name.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I needed stronger financials for the loan.”
“You forged her signature.”
“I copied it.”
“That is not better.”
“I know.”
The admission was so quiet that it took some of the satisfaction out of hearing it.
Godfrey lowered himself into the chair across from me.
“The first lender rejected me.”
“So you tried another.”
“They said the business needed documented administrative support and more stable income.”
“And somehow my sick wife became an employee.”
“She wasn’t sick then.”
“Does that make fraud healthier?”
“No.”
He rubbed both palms over his face.
“I thought I’d fix it before anybody ever knew.”
That sentence had apparently become the family motto.
“Fix what?”
“Pay everything back.”
“With what?”
“The business.”
I looked around the office.
“And did you?”
“No.”
“Because?”
“Because businesses don’t become profitable because you need them to.”
For once, he sounded like a man instead of an excuse.
I opened the file again.
“How did Victor find out?”
“He started asking Mom for more money.”
“And?”
“I told her we had to stop.”
Godfrey swallowed.
“She told him she couldn’t keep paying.”
“So he came after you.”
“He started looking.”
“At what?”
“Public records, business filings, whatever he could get.”
Godfrey gave a bitter little laugh.
“Turns out blackmail makes people very motivated.”
“How did he connect Phedra?”
“I used Mom’s address.”
I looked at him.
“And your phone number.”
“Yes.”
“And then he threatened to expose you.”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“At first ten thousand.”
“At first.”
“He kept asking.”
I leaned back.
“Did any of my money go to him because of you?”
Godfrey looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Maybe thirty.”
“Thirty thousand?”
“Yes.”
The number should have shocked me.
Instead, it slid into a place already overcrowded with numbers.
“What about the messages to Phedra?”
His shoulders stiffened.
“I was trying to keep her from calling you.”
“Why?”
“Because if you came home, you’d start looking at everything.”
There it was.
No mother to blame.
No family emergency.
No complicated history.
Just fear.
“You let her believe I knew about the cancer.”
“I thought it would be for a few weeks.”
“You told her I didn’t want to spend money on treatment.”
Godfrey looked sick.
“I know.”
“You made my wife think I chose money over her.”
“I know.”
“And then you stood in the backyard and called her a thief.”
His eyes closed.
“That part was Mom.”
“You said it too.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He opened his eyes.
“Because once we found out the account could lead back to me, Mom said if Phedra ever discovered it, we needed a reason nobody would believe her.”
The words sat between us.
I could hear a compressor cooling somewhere downstairs.
It clicked twice and went silent.
“You built the lie before she found the truth.”
Godfrey nodded.
My body wanted something simple.
A fist.
A broken desk.
The satisfaction of impact.
Instead, I stood and walked to the window.
In the glass, I could see him behind me.
He looked smaller than he had in the backyard.
That did not make him less guilty.
It only made guilt look less cinematic.
“I’m going to ask you something once.”
He waited.
“Where is the old phone?”
He did not answer.
I turned.
“Godfrey.”
“In my desk.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
He opened the bottom drawer and took out a phone wrapped in a shop towel.
My old phone.
A cracked corner.
A faded case.
Four years ago, I had used it to send Phedra pictures of snowbanks outside the Calgary apartment because she had never seen snow that deep.
Now it had been used to make her believe I had abandoned her while she was sick.
“Put it on the desk.”
He did.
“Don’t touch it again.”
“Are you going to the police?”
“I’m going to give it to Phedra’s lawyer.”
His mouth tightened.
“She’ll destroy me.”
“No.”
I picked up the file but left the phone untouched.
“You did that part yourself.”
The next morning, Miriam arranged for the phone to be preserved properly.
Lena took copies of the records Godfrey had given me.
By the end of the week, the bank had frozen the disputed account, the lender had opened a fraud review, and Phedra had filed the reports Miriam recommended.
Nothing happened dramatically.
No squad cars arrived at Selina’s house.
No handcuffs appeared during dinner.
There were calls, forms, interviews, requests for documents, and long silences while institutions moved at institutional speed.
That frustrated me at first.
Then I began to understand that consequences did not need an audience to be real.
Godfrey called me seventeen times over three days.
I answered once.
“Did you give them the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Damian.”
“What?”
“You know what this can do to me.”
“Yes.”
“I could lose the shop.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t care?”
I looked through the window of the furnished apartment Phedra had chosen near the clinic.
A delivery man was carrying a small table toward the building entrance.
“I care.”
Godfrey went quiet.
“That’s worse.”
“Probably.”
He hung up.
Selina came to the hospital two days later.
May you like
Phedra had started the first stage of treatment planning and was stronger than when I found her, though walking down the hallway still exhausted her.
Marisol told us Selina was downstairs asking to visit.
