Chương 6
I could hear his voice in every sentence.
He said Rebecca was struggling emotionally.
He said I had been under severe psychological pressure during pregnancy.
He said our marriage had recently become difficult.
He asked everyone to respect his role as my husband and the father of our unborn child.
I read that line twice.
“The father of our unborn child.”
Brooks stood beside my bed.
“He doesn’t know the baby survived.”
“No.”
“Does that help us?”
“It helps show what he believes.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I looked at her.
“If he thinks Noah died, he won’t look for him.”
Brooks nodded.
That was the first useful thing Michael’s cruelty had given me.
The funeral began at two.
I was not there.
That fact mattered more than I expected.
I had imagined revenge as something active.
A door opening.
A confrontation.
Michael’s face collapsing when I stepped into the room.
Instead, I sat in a hospital recliner with an ice pack against my incision while Noah slept under blue-tinted NICU lights upstairs.
Brooks received updates by phone.
She gave me only what investigators had independently observed.
Rebecca arrived alone.
Thomas came with his wife.
Several board members attended.
Michael’s mother flew in from Arizona.
Ashley arrived twenty minutes before the service wearing black.
“She went?”
My voice came out sharper than I intended.
Brooks nodded.
“With Michael?”
“Separately.”
“Did they speak?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Brooks glanced at her notes.
“Briefly near the entrance.”
“That tells me nothing.”
“It tells you what we know.”
I hated her again for five seconds.
Then I hated myself for needing details badly enough to make those five seconds matter.
At two thirty-eight, Brooks’s phone vibrated.
She read the message and looked at me.
“What?”
“Your sister confronted Ashley.”
I sat forward.
“About the affair?”
“Apparently.”
“How would Rebecca know?”
“She says she suspected it months ago.”
Of course she had.
Rebecca had always been better at recognizing people she disliked.
“What happened?”
“Raised voices.”
“Did Michael intervene?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He told Rebecca she was making a scene.”
I laughed.
The sound hurt.
“What did she say?”
Brooks looked reluctant.
“Tell me.”
“She told him the scene started when he brought his girlfriend to his wife’s funeral.”
I covered my mouth.
For one second, the hospital room disappeared and I could see my sister standing beneath those beige chapel lights with her arms crossed and her chin tilted in the exact way that used to terrify boys who came to pick me up in high school.
“What did Michael do?”
“He asked security to remove her.”
My laughter stopped.
“He had my sister thrown out?”
“She left before security touched her.”
“Good.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“You look proud.”
“I am.”
“That’s not necessarily useful.”
“I don’t care.”
Brooks folded her notes.
“That part is useful.”
I looked at her.
“When Rebecca accused Ashley, Michael did not deny the relationship.”
My pulse changed.
“What did he say?”
“He said this was neither the time nor place.”
I stared at her.
“He didn’t deny it.”
“No.”
“People heard?”
“Yes.”
“Board members?”
“At least two.”
Something cold and satisfying moved through me.
Not justice.
Not yet.
But Michael had spent years caring about appearances more than almost anything.
He corrected waiters quietly and insulted them later.
He apologized in public and punished in private.
He could tolerate being hated if he still looked respectable.
Rebecca had taken that from him for one minute in a crowded chapel.
I wished I had seen his face.
Then Brooks received another update.
Her expression changed.
“What now?”
“Michael spoke during the service.”
I waited.
Brooks did not immediately continue.
“Say it.”
“He described your last hours together.”
My hands went still.
“What did he say?”
“That you had been anxious.”
“That’s a lie.”
“That you were frightened about motherhood.”
I felt something twist beneath my ribs.
“That we had argued.”
“Yes.”
“That I walked away.”
“Yes.”
I stood too quickly.
Pain cut across my abdomen.
Brooks reached toward me, but I shoved her hand aside.
“He’s using my pregnancy.”
“Sit down.”
“He’s telling people I was unstable.”
“Claire.”
“He’s building a dead woman who can’t answer him.”
My knees weakened.
I sat because my body forced me to.
Brooks waited until my breathing slowed.
Then she said, “He also said you had recently discussed increasing your life insurance.”
I looked up.
“I never discussed that with him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The policy had been increased fourteen months earlier after a restructuring of my estate plan.
Michael had signed beneficiary acknowledgments, but he had not been involved in deciding the amount.
“Why would he mention it at a funeral?”
Brooks’s eyes held mine.
“Because he may be getting ahead of something.”
The anger inside me shifted.
“What?”
“If he expects investigators to discover the policy, he may want witnesses to remember that you supposedly initiated changes.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It might if he plans to argue the policy had nothing to do with him.”
I stared at the wall.
Michael was not just mourning me badly.
He was rehearsing.
He had turned my funeral into testimony.
Brooks’s phone rang.
This time she answered.
“Brooks.”
She listened.
Her face became unreadable.
“When?”
Another pause.
“Do not approach him yet.”
She ended the call.
“What happened?”
“We may have found the woman who carried Ashley’s phone into that restaurant.”
“Who is she?”
“Her cousin.”
My heart kicked.
“Did she admit it?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“She says Ashley asked her to hold the phone because Ashley was meeting Michael to discuss something private.”
“Where?”
“She claims she doesn’t know.”
“That’s enough.”
“No.”
I clenched my jaw.
Brooks continued before I could argue.
“It gives us a witness who can establish deliberate separation from the phone.”
“That is evidence.”
“Yes.”
The word steadied me.
“What else did she say?”
“That Ashley gave her cash.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“For holding a phone?”
May you like
“That’s what bothered our investigator too.”
I looked toward the window.
