Chương 10
She almost laughed.
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because I need to explain everything.”
“You needed to explain everything three months ago.”
“I know.”
The words were soft.
Too soft.
Mara hated that softness because some part of her still wanted to believe it meant he was hurting as much as she was.
“I’m not coming home tonight,” she said.
Daniel went silent.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not like you.”
The sentence irritated her more than it should have.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was familiar.
Daniel had spent years knowing her patterns.
He knew she hated leaving dishes overnight.
He knew she folded grocery bags before throwing them away.
He knew she listened to the same album whenever she was overwhelmed because she liked knowing exactly what song came next.
He knew the small things.
Apparently, he also knew exactly how long she could survive without the truth.
“I’ll figure it out,” she said.
“Mara.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
She closed her eyes.
There it was again.
The sentence she had wanted yesterday.
The sentence that now felt too small.
“I believe you’re sorry,” she said.
Daniel did not respond.
“That doesn’t mean I know what to do with it.”
She ended the call before he could answer.
For the rest of the afternoon, she worked badly.
She answered emails with the wrong names.
She misplaced a folder she had been holding five minutes earlier.
She apologized to a coworker because she accidentally walked into the wrong meeting room and sat down before realizing nobody there knew her.
The embarrassment almost helped.
For thirty seconds, she was just a person who made a stupid mistake.
Then her phone buzzed again.
Another message.
Not from Daniel.
From an unknown number.
Mara stared at it.
She almost ignored it.
Instead, she opened it.
I know you found out.
The message had no name attached.
She felt her shoulders tighten.
A second message appeared.
I should have told you sooner.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
Who is this?
She waited.
The typing bubble appeared.
Then disappeared.
Then appeared again.
Finally, another message arrived.
Someone who was there.
Mara stood from her chair.
The room around her suddenly felt too exposed.
She walked into the hallway and called the number.
It rang once.
Twice.
A woman answered.
“Hello?”
Mara said nothing.
The woman breathed out.
“I figured you would call.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Leah.”
The name meant nothing.
That frightened Mara.
Everyone else connected to this seemed to have a history she was somehow missing.
“Leah who?”
“Leah Parker.”
Still nothing.
“I worked with your father.”
Mara’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“My father has been dead for eight years.”
“I know.”
The hallway noise faded.
“Then why are you calling me?”
“Because I was tired of watching everyone pretend this was only about you.”
Mara looked through the glass wall of the conference room beside her.
People were sitting around a table discussing quarterly numbers.
Someone was eating a sandwich.
Someone was writing notes.
A normal workday continuing while her life kept splitting into pieces.
“What does Daniel have to do with my father?”
Leah paused.
“That’s the part you don’t know.”
Mara leaned against the wall.
“Then tell me.”
“I can’t.”
The anger came back immediately.
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
The confidence in Leah’s voice made Mara stop.
“Why?”
“Because I spent eight years saying the same thing to myself.”
There was something in the way she said it.
Not dramatic.
Not emotional.
Just exhausted.
Mara looked down at the floor.
“What happened on April seventeenth?”
Leah was silent.
Long enough that Mara thought the call had dropped.
“Your father was not where the records say he was.”
The sentence landed slowly.
“My father is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Before he died.”
Mara pressed her hand against her forehead.
She hated conversations where every answer created three more questions.
“Why is Daniel in the picture?”
“Because he was trying to fix what your father left behind.”
“My father left behind a lot of things.”
“Yes.”
The answer was too quick.
Mara noticed.
“You know something.”
“I know enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to know Daniel was not the person who started this.”
The hallway seemed colder.
Mara did not like defending Daniel.
She liked even less defending him when she did not understand why.
“Then who did?”
Leah did not answer.
“Mara.”
The way Leah said her name changed something.
She sounded afraid.
Not for herself.
For Mara.
“Meet me somewhere public,” Leah said.
“Why?”
“Because you need to see what I have.”
Mara looked toward her office.
The photograph was still sitting beside the folder.
Waiting.
“How did you get my number?”
Another pause.
That pause was becoming a language.
“I was given it.”
“By who?”
Leah sighed.
“Daniel.”
The betrayal felt fresh again.
Even when the answer should have helped.
“He gave you my number?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A week ago.”
Mara almost dropped the phone.
“A week ago?”
“He wanted me to contact you.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because he asked me not to.”
The hallway became silent.
“Why would he ask you not to?”
Leah’s voice lowered.
“Because he was scared of what you would find.”
Mara ended the call.
Not because she had enough information.
Because she had too much.
She returned to her office and packed her things slowly.
A coworker passing by stopped at the doorway.
“You leaving?”
Mara looked up.
It was Rachel.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
The question almost made her smile.
Everyone asked that question.
Nobody knew what they were really asking.
Are you falling apart?
Are you angry?
Are you going to come back tomorrow and act normal?
“Not really,” Mara said.
Rachel nodded.
That honesty seemed to make her uncomfortable.
Most people preferred easy answers.
“I hope you know,” Rachel said, “that people are confused because they don’t know the whole story.”
Mara put her laptop into her bag.
“I don’t know the whole story either.”
Rachel had no response to that.
And somehow, that made Mara feel less alone.
Outside, the air was warmer than she expected.
She stood beside her car for a while before getting inside.
The city moved around her.
A man carried flowers into a restaurant.
A teenager argued with someone through earbuds.
A woman chased a receipt that had blown across the sidewalk.
Nobody knew.
Nobody cared.
And strangely, that was comforting.
Mara drove to a small coffee shop near the river where she and her father used to go when she was younger.
She had not been there in years.
She told herself it was because she needed somewhere quiet.
She knew better.
Sometimes people returned to places where they had once felt understood.
Even if the person who understood them was gone.
She sat near the window with a cup of coffee she barely touched.
Ten minutes later, Leah walked in.
She was younger than Mara expected.
Maybe early forties.
Her hair was pulled back quickly, like she had done it without looking in a mirror.
She carried a worn canvas bag.
She spotted Mara immediately.
Neither woman smiled.
Leah sat across from her.
For a few seconds, they just looked at each other.
Then Leah placed the bag on the table.
“I’m sorry.”
Mara looked at the bag.
“I’m tired of hearing that.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
Leah nodded.
“Fair.”
That almost surprised Mara.
Almost.
Leah opened the bag.
She pulled out a notebook.
Not a dramatic old notebook.
Not something from a movie.
Just a cheap black notebook with bent corners and a coffee stain on the cover.
Mara stared at it.
“Your father wrote in this.”
She did not touch it.
“Why do you have it?”
“Because he gave it to me.”
“When?”
“Two days before he died.”
Mara looked up.
The answer hurt because it sounded impossible.
“My father never mentioned you.”
Leah looked down.
“I know.”
“Who were you to him?”
Leah swallowed.
“A friend.”
Mara waited.
Leah looked at the notebook.
“And someone who made a mistake.”
The words sat between them.
Mara slowly reached toward the notebook.
Her fingers touched the cover.
For the first time in years, she felt close to a part of her father that had existed outside her memory.
She opened it.
The first page was filled with his handwriting.
And beneath the date, there was one sentence.
Mara read it twice.
Then she stopped breathing for a moment.
Because the sentence was not about Daniel.
It was not about money.
May you like
It was not about the documents that had started this.
It was about her.
