Chương 2
“Yes.”
“And after that ran low?”
“It didn’t.”
Claire turned.
Thomas looked exhausted rather than embarrassed, which somehow made everything worse.
“How much money is in that account?”
“Enough.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
He looked at the phone in his hand.
“It isn’t.”
Claire folded her arms.
Thomas unlocked the phone and opened his banking app.
He handed it to her.
The balance made her sit down.
She looked again because her brain had apparently decided numbers no longer meant what they had meant five minutes earlier.
“Where did this come from?”
“My grandfather.”
Claire knew Thomas’s maternal grandfather had died before they met.
“He left you all of this?”
“Not all at once.”
Thomas sat opposite her.
“There was a trust, then investments, and I barely touched it except for Mom.”
Claire placed the phone on the table.
“You never told me.”
“No.”
“We have been married five years.”
“I know.”
“We spent three months arguing about whether we could afford to replace the bathroom tiles.”
“I know.”
“You let me compare tile samples like we were negotiating a federal budget.”
A helpless laugh escaped him.
Claire glared.
His expression collapsed immediately.
“Sorry.”
“That wasn’t funny.”
“No.”
“It was a little funny.”
“I’m not falling for that.”
Despite herself, Claire laughed once.
It hurt her cheek.
Then she started crying.
Thomas came around the table but stopped before touching her.
“I’m sorry.”
Claire wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
“For the money or your mother?”
“Both.”
“Those are very different apologies.”
“I know.”
His phone began vibrating on the table.
Marie.
Thomas watched it until the call ended.
A message appeared almost immediately.
Claire could see only the first words.
You have humiliated me enough.
Thomas turned the phone facedown.
“I’m stopping the payments.”
Claire looked at him.
“Because she hit me?”
“Because I should have stopped them years ago.”
“That sounds different.”
“It is.”
He sat down again.
“I kept telling myself I was helping Dad.”
Claire glanced toward the dark window.
“Does your father know?”
“Of course he knows.”
“Does Chloé?”
“I assumed so.”
“Thomas.”
He looked away.
“I don’t actually know.”
Claire pressed the ice pack against her cheek again.
She wanted to be furious cleanly.
Instead, anger kept colliding with pity, then with the humiliating awareness that she had spent years trying to win the approval of a woman whose household her husband was secretly financing.
“Why did your mother need the money?”
Thomas picked at a loose thread on his sleeve.
“Dad’s business had trouble years ago.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He told me cash flow.”
“And you never asked beyond that?”
“I was twenty-nine, Grandpa had just died, Mom was panicking, and Dad looked like he hadn’t slept in a month.”
Thomas swallowed.
“I had money and they needed it.”
“So you became their bank.”
“I became useful.”
The words were quiet.
Claire stopped moving.
Thomas looked toward the stairs.
“My mother likes useful people.”
The bitterness in his voice was old.
Claire had heard pieces of it before without understanding their shape.
Marie praised Thomas whenever he fixed something, paid for dinner, rearranged his schedule, drove across town, or solved a problem.
She called him her dependable son.
Claire had mistaken that for affection.
“Did she ask for twenty-five hundred?”
“Originally fifteen hundred.”
“How did it become twenty-five?”
“The mortgage went up, then there were taxes, then Chloé needed help.”
“And nobody ever needed less.”
“No.”
Thomas picked up his phone.
“I canceled the recurring transfer before we left their driveway.”
Claire stared at him.
“You did it there?”
“In the car.”
“When?”
“While you were buckling your seat belt.”
Something cold moved through her that had nothing to do with the ice pack.
Marie did not know yet.
Not really.
She had watched her son leave believing tomorrow would still look like yesterday.
Thomas’s phone rang again.
This time the screen showed Paul.
Thomas frowned.
His father almost never called him directly.
He answered.
“Dad?”
Claire watched the color leave his face.
“No, we’re home.”
A pause followed.
Thomas stood.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t know?”
Claire could hear Paul’s voice without making out the words.
Thomas walked toward the window.
“Dad, slow down.”
Another pause.
Then Thomas turned toward Claire.
“What account?”
His expression changed again, but this time it was not anger.
It was disbelief.
Paul spoke for nearly a minute.
Thomas said nothing.
Finally, he pulled out a chair and sat as if his legs had stopped cooperating.
“Send me everything.”
He listened.
“No, don’t tell Mom you called.”
Claire lowered the ice pack.
Thomas looked directly at her.
“When did you find out?”
Paul answered.
Thomas closed his eyes.
“All right.”
He ended the call.
Claire waited.
Thomas remained motionless, the phone still against his ear.
“What happened?”
He lowered it slowly.
“My father says the mortgage was paid off four years ago.”
Claire stared at him.
Thomas unlocked the phone again, but his fingers were trembling now.
“He says he thought I stopped sending money when that happened.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Then where has it been going?”
Before Thomas could answer, his phone chimed.
A message from Paul appeared with three attachments.
Thomas opened the first.
It was a bank statement.
He scrolled once, then stopped.
Claire moved beside him.
Near the bottom of the page was a transfer made three days earlier from an account carrying Marie Beaumont’s name.
The amount was forty-eight thousand euros.
The recipient was Chloé.
Claire looked at Thomas.
He opened the second attachment.
Another statement showed transfers stretching backward month after month, some small, some enormous, all moving money from the account Thomas had been funding into accounts he had never seen.
The third attachment was not a statement.
It was a scanned letter from a real estate attorney.
Thomas read the first paragraph twice.
“What is it?”
He handed Claire the phone.
May you like
The letter concerned the proposed purchase of an apartment.
The buyer named on the document was Chloé Beaumont.
