Chương 6
“No reasonable person would expect you to.”
Emily sat back.
For the first time in three days, she felt tired rather than frightened.
It was almost pleasant.
Then Rachel asked, “Did you ever give Ethan access to financial information?”
Emily looked up.
“What kind?”
“Accounts. Trusts. Investments. Family business information.”
“My parents created a trust for me.”
“Does Ethan know?”
“Yes.”
“How much does he know?”
Emily thought about it.
Too much.
Not because she had handed him statements.
Because they had been planning a marriage.
They had discussed buying a house.
Children.
Insurance.
Taxes.
The ordinary administrative intimacy of two people expecting to combine their lives.
“He knows approximately what I have.”
Rachel wrote something down.
“Change your passwords.”
Emily felt stupid.
Rachel seemed to notice.
“People share information with people they plan to marry. That isn’t unusual.”
Emily nodded.
Still stupid.
She changed the passwords.
Then the email arrived.
It came from an address she did not recognize.
Subject: You should know what he was trying to cover.
There was one attachment.
Emily did not open it.
She called Rachel.
That decision probably saved her from making the next week much worse.
Rachel had the email reviewed safely. The attachment was not malicious software. It was a PDF containing a summary of financial obligations associated with one of Ethan’s development companies.
The numbers were ugly.
But the document alone proved little.
The sender had written no name.
Rachel advised Emily not to contact them yet.
“Could Ethan have sent it?”
“To manipulate me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make you react. To see what you know. To create a record. I don’t know.”
Emily hated uncertainty.
Ethan knew that about her.
He used to tease her because she read restaurant menus before leaving home.
She wanted to know where she would park, how long the drive would take, whether a hotel room had a coffee maker.
Once, in Charleston, Ethan had hidden their boarding passes as a joke.
She had cried.
He had laughed for almost a minute before realizing she was genuinely upset.
Later he apologized and called her adorable.
She had told that story at parties.
Now she remembered something else.
He had not given the boarding passes back when she first asked.
He had waited until she begged.
Emily stopped telling herself that every old memory was evidence.
Some were simply memories.
Some had been good.
That was harder.
Ethan had made pancakes on Sundays.
He called Diane every year on her birthday.
He knew Emily hated lilies and remembered to tell florists.
When Emily’s elderly dog died, Ethan drove six hours through the night because she had said on the phone, “I don’t want to be alone.”
A person could do those things and still hit someone.
Emily had spent days searching for a version of him that made the contradiction disappear.
There wasn’t one.
On Friday, she went back to the apartment with Robert, Rachel’s investigator, and a locksmith.
Ethan was not there.
His clothes were.
So were his shoes, watches, golf clubs, shaving kit, and the expensive espresso machine he had insisted they needed.
Emily stood in the kitchen staring at it.
“Is that his?” Robert asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“I hate that thing.”
Emily looked at him.
“You used it every time you came over.”
“I hated myself afterward.”
She laughed.
Robert smiled.
Then he saw a photograph from the engagement party on the refrigerator and stopped.
Emily took it down.
She did not tear it up.
She placed it facedown on the counter.
They packed Ethan’s belongings into boxes.
Robert was terrible at folding clothes.
Emily made him stop.
At the back of the bedroom closet, she found a gray document case.
She recognized it.
Ethan carried contracts in it.
“Don’t open it,” the investigator said.
Emily froze.
“It’s in my closet.”
“Still don’t.”
Rachel was called.
The case belonged to Ethan.
They photographed where it had been found and packed it unopened with his belongings.
Robert looked irritated.
“That could contain exactly what we need.”
“It could contain his dry-cleaning receipts,” Emily said.
Her father looked at her.
“What?”
“That’s what you would tell me if our positions were reversed.”
He grunted.
“I’d be very annoying.”
“You are.”
“I know.”
The locks were changed.
Ethan’s property was transferred through an arranged third party.
He did not come.
For two days, there was silence.
Emily began to relax.
Then Marcus called.
“I need to tell you something.”
She sat down.
Marcus had been Ethan’s closest friend since college.
He had also been the man who led him away from the villa after Robert struck him.
“What?”
“I think he’s in serious financial trouble.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean serious.”
Marcus explained that Ethan had borrowed money privately from several people. Not just banks. Friends. Investors. People who had trusted him.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is everybody telling me they don’t know?”
“Because Ethan compartmentalizes.”
“Meaning?”
“He tells everybody just enough.”
Marcus sounded exhausted.
“He asked me for two hundred thousand dollars in May.”
Emily stood.
“What?”
“I said no.”
“He told me you invested.”
“I didn’t.”
Emily walked to the window.
Traffic moved below.
A woman in running clothes waited at the corner with a golden retriever. The dog sat every time she stopped and stood every time she moved.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Marcus was silent.
Emily laughed without humor.
“Apparently that’s the question of the week.”
“I thought it was business.”
“You were his best man.”
“I know.”
“You stood six feet from me while I was putting on a wedding dress.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“All right.”
She pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because he called me last night.”
“What did he want?”
“Money.”
Emily closed her eyes.
“For what?”
“He said if he couldn’t make a payment Monday, one of his projects would collapse.”
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“And?”
“He said the marriage was supposed to solve it.”
