Chương 4
My fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“He called you?”
“Yesterday.”
“When?”
Natalie hesitated.
“After your last call.”
I stared at her.
“He called you after he ignored me?”
She swallowed.
“He said you were upset and that you might say things you didn’t mean.”
A bitter laugh escaped before I could stop it.
“Of course he did.”
Natalie crossed her arms.
“He said you found out about Maui.”
The words sat between us.
I waited for anger.
For excuses.
For her to defend him.
Instead, she looked exhausted.
Not surprised.
Not shocked.
Just tired.
“How long have you known?” I asked.
Natalie looked at the floor.
“About the affair?”
“Yes.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“I didn’t know what to call it.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I’m not saying it’s okay.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I’m saying I didn’t know how bad it was.”
I studied her face.
Natalie had always been different from Julian.
She was less polished.
Less controlled.
She wore her emotions openly, sometimes to her own disadvantage.
“Why are you here?”
She looked toward the box.
The movement was small.
But I saw it.
My chest tightened.
“You know about this.”
Natalie did not answer.
And that silence told me more than words could have.
Natalie did not answer immediately.
She walked farther into the kitchen and placed her purse on the chair across from me.
Her movements were careful, almost rehearsed.
That bothered me more than if she had looked guilty.
Guilt was simple.
Guilt meant someone knew they had done something wrong.
This looked like someone who had spent a long time deciding what version of the truth they could survive telling.
“I knew Eleanor was keeping something,” Natalie finally said.
Her voice was quieter now.
“But I didn’t know what.”
I looked at the open box between us.
“You knew about the money.”
Natalie looked at the notebook.
Then away.
“I knew Julian was moving things around.”
“How?”
She pulled out the chair and sat down.
“My mother called me six months ago.”
I felt a strange wave of anger.
Everyone had pieces of this story.
Everyone except me.
“She called you?”
“She was worried.”
“Natalie, your mother was sick.”
“I know.”
The words came out quickly.
Almost defensively.
Then her face changed.
“I know.”
The second time sounded different.
Less like an argument.
More like regret.
I sat across from her.
For years, I had thought Julian’s family existed in two groups.
The people who knew him and the people who were fooled by him.
I was starting to realize there was a third group.
The people who knew something was wrong but were afraid to look directly at it.
“What did she tell you?”
Natalie folded her hands together.
“She said Julian had asked her for access to some old accounts.”
I glanced at the notebook.
“Her accounts?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he need access to her accounts?”
Natalie’s eyes moved toward the window.
“Because he was losing money.”
The sentence landed quietly.
No dramatic confession.
No raised voice.
Just a fact that had apparently been sitting in the world while I lived beside him.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
She looked frustrated.
“At first, I thought it was business trouble.”
“So did I.”
Natalie looked at me.
There was something painful in that shared sentence.
Not comfort.
Not friendship.
Just two people realizing they had both been wrong.
“Julian always made everything sound temporary,” she said.
“He has a way of making disasters sound like inconveniences.”
I almost smiled.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was painfully accurate.
“He did that when our roof collapsed.”
Natalie looked confused.
“Our roof?”
“Three years ago.”
“Oh.”
She shook her head slightly.
“He told me he handled it.”
“He told me he handled it too.”
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.
It was a strange thing to discover about a person you had spent years with.
Not that they lied.
But how many separate versions of their life they had managed to maintain.
I closed Eleanor’s letter.
“What exactly did Julian do?”
Natalie looked at the box again.
“I don’t know everything.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
She looked at me directly.
“It’s the truth.”
Her honesty caught me off guard.
Natalie was not trying to impress me.
She was not trying to fix the situation.
She was simply admitting she was standing in the same darkness.
“My mother kept records,” she said.
“She always did.”
“I noticed.”
“She didn’t trust memory.”
A faint smile crossed Natalie’s face.
“She used to say memories were too generous to people.”
I looked down at the notebook.
That sounded like Eleanor.
“She thought people edited their own mistakes.”
“She was right.”
Natalie reached into her purse.
My body immediately tensed.
She noticed.
“I’m not here to take anything.”
She slowly pulled out a small envelope.
“I brought this.”
I did not touch it.
“What is it?”
“My mother gave it to me three weeks ago.”
My eyes narrowed.
“Why didn’t you show me?”
Natalie looked ashamed.
“Because Julian called me that night.”
“And?”
“He asked if Mom had talked to me about anything.”
“And you lied.”
“Yes.”
She did not defend herself.
That almost made it worse.
“Why?”
Natalie looked down at her hands.
“Because I was scared.”
The answer was so ordinary that I hated how much I understood it.
Fear rarely arrived looking dramatic.
Sometimes it looked like ignoring a phone call.
Sometimes it looked like telling yourself tomorrow would be easier.
“Scared of what?”
“Losing my brother.”
I stared at her.
“After everything?”
She flinched.
“I didn’t say it made sense.”
That was the first thing she had said that sounded like Eleanor.
Not an excuse.
Not a defense.
Just an uncomfortable truth.
Natalie pushed the envelope toward me.
“He called me after the hospital.”
“Julian?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
She hesitated.
“He asked if you found anything.”
May you like
My fingers stopped moving.
“He knew about the box?”
