Chương 3
A laugh escaped me.
It sounded ugly even to my own ears.
“You’re already involved.”
“Not the way you think.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“Then help me stop thinking it.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“Your father asked me for help with some records.”
“What records?”
“Business records.”
“Why you?”
“I’m good with spreadsheets.”
“You teach four-year-olds.”
“I also know how to use Excel, Daniel.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know exactly what you meant.”
I walked to the window.
Outside, somebody was dragging a recycling bin down the sidewalk.
Its wheels bumped rhythmically over every crack in the concrete.
“You went into his bedroom multiple times to work on business records and never mentioned it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he asked me not to.”
I turned around.
“Why would my father ask my fiancée to keep business paperwork secret from me?”
She looked down at her hands.
“That is the question you should be asking.”
I drove back to my parents’ house before I could talk myself out of it.
My father was in the detached workshop with the overhead door raised, replacing a hydraulic hose on a compact excavator.
He glanced up when I entered.
“Forget something?”
“Who was in your bedroom last night?”
The wrench stopped in his hand.
Only for a moment.
Then he returned to the fitting.
“You drove twenty minutes to ask me that?”
“Yes.”
“Then you wasted gas.”
“Who was she?”
He wiped his hands on a rag.
Behind him, a radio commentator discussed a football game neither of us was listening to.
“You’re married one day and already looking for trouble.”
“Mariana told me about the records.”
That changed him.
His face did not collapse or reveal some cinematic confession.
He simply folded the rag once, very carefully.
“What did she tell you?”
“That you asked her to help.”
“With what?”
“You tell me.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
For most of my childhood, that had been enough for him to win.
This time I waited.
Finally, he tossed the rag onto the workbench.
“Close the door.”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“Who was in your room?”
He looked past me toward the house.
Then he said something I had not expected.
“Your mother cannot hear about this from you.”
My chest tightened.
“So there was a woman.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
He walked toward the workbench and opened a metal drawer.
Inside were invoices, keys, two prescription bottles, and a thick white envelope.
He removed the envelope but did not hand it to me.
“The woman you saw was not Mariana.”
I should have felt relief.
Instead, the way he said my wife’s name made my stomach turn.
“How do I know that?”
“Because Mariana was never the woman I was sleeping with.”
The word never hung between us.
I stared at him.
My father seemed to hear his own mistake a second too late.
“Never?”
He closed his eyes.
“Daniel.”
“What the hell does never mean?”
He put the envelope on the bench.
“It means exactly what I said.”
“No, it means somebody accused you of it before.”
He said nothing.
A truck passed on the road outside, its tires hissing over damp pavement.
I stepped closer.
“Who thought you were sleeping with Mariana?”
My father looked toward the house again.
When he answered, his voice was almost too quiet to hear.
“Your mother.”
For a second, I thought I had misunderstood him.
“My mother thinks you slept with my wife?”
“Thought.”
“When?”
Rogelio pressed both hands against the edge of the workbench.
“About six weeks ago.”
“And nobody thought I should know?”
“It was handled.”
I stared at him.
“You have an interesting definition of handled.”
“Your mother misunderstood something.”
“What?”
He picked up the white envelope again, then seemed to reconsider and set it down.
“She saw Mariana leaving my room.”
“At night?”
“In the evening.”
“Doing what?”
“I told you.”
“No, Mariana told me she was helping with records.”
“She was.”
“Records you apparently keep beside your bed.”
My father’s jaw tightened.
“You came here angry, so anything I say is going to sound guilty.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Daniel.”
“Who was there last night?”
He glanced toward the open workshop door.
A neighbor’s riding mower droned somewhere beyond the property line.
The ordinary sound made the conversation feel obscene.
“Her name is Claudia.”
“Claudia who?”
He rubbed his thumb along a grease stain on the workbench.
“Claudia Reyes.”
I waited.
He gave me nothing else.
“How long?”
“Daniel, this is between your mother and me.”
“You dragged my wife into it.”
“I did not.”
“You had her sneaking around with financial records while Mom thought you were sleeping together.”
“She wasn’t sneaking.”
“Then why didn’t I know?”
His mouth hardened.
“Because the records concerned you.”
That stopped me.
“What about me?”
He pushed the envelope toward me.
I did not touch it.
My name was written across the front in black marker.
Underneath it was the name of my father’s company, Sterling Equipment Leasing.
“What is that?”
“Something I was trying to fix before you found out.”
I laughed once.
“That sentence usually ends well.”
“Take it.”
I opened the envelope.
The first sheet was a photocopy of a commercial loan agreement.
I knew enough about paperwork from years of repairing machines for people who financed everything they owned to recognize the structure.
The borrower was Sterling Equipment Leasing LLC.
The guarantors were Rogelio Sterling and Daniel Sterling.
I read my name twice.
Then I found the signature.
It looked like mine.
It was not mine.
The workshop seemed to narrow around me.
“What did you do?”
My father did not answer.
I turned another page.
Then another.
The loan amount was two hundred eighty thousand dollars.
My stomach dropped.
“You forged my signature.”
“I signed for you.”
“That is called forging my signature.”
“I was going to remove you.”
“From a loan I never agreed to?”
May you like
“The lender wanted another guarantor.”
“So you used me.”
