Chương 3
“Next year?”
“Stop.”
“After Lucy graduated?”
“Daniel.”
“After I buried an empty coffin?”
“We never buried a coffin.”
His jaw tightened.
She saw it and regretted the sentence.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No, you’re not there yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t want the apology. I want the mechanics.”
“The mechanics.”
“Start with the money.”
Elise looked toward the hallway.
He could see her constructing an answer.
“Don’t make it pretty.”
Her eyes came back to him.
“I gave Rachel one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.”
Daniel sat down on the opposite bench.
The number was not enormous in the context of his finances, which somehow made it uglier. The house around them had cost seven times that. Daniel had authorized charitable transfers larger than that without a second thought.
But one hundred and eighty thousand dollars was enough to change the life of somebody who had been drowning in debt.
Rachel had been drowning.
He knew that too.
“From where?”
“My account.”
“Which account?”
“My personal investment account.”
“Was it a gift?”
“No.”
“A loan?”
“No.”
“What did she give you for it?”
Elise hesitated.
“Distance.”
The word hung there.
“From me?”
“From the children.”
Daniel stood.
Elise did too.
“I need you to hear the entire thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“No, you’re waiting to hate me.”
“I don’t have to wait.”
Her face hardened for the first time since he entered the foyer.
“There. That’s what you do.”
He almost laughed again.
“What I do?”
“You decide there is a correct version of a person and then punish reality for not matching it.”
“I’m not discussing my personality right now.”
“You should.”
“I’m discussing the fact that you paid my children’s mother to vanish.”
“You were going to ask for full custody.”
“That was before.”
“It was three weeks before.”
“She was using again.”
“Yes.”
“She left Lucy alone in an apartment.”
“For twelve minutes.”
“Lucy was five.”
“I know how old she was.”
“Then don’t say twelve minutes like it was a parking ticket.”
Elise stood straighter.
“She had taken pills. She could barely keep her eyes open when you got there.”
Daniel remembered the smell of burned toast in Rachel’s apartment and Lucy sitting cross-legged in front of a cartoon with a blanket around her. Rachel had been asleep on the bathroom floor, one cheek against the tile.
She had gone to treatment the next morning.
It had not been her first time.
Elise said, “You told me if she relapsed again, you were done protecting her.”
“I said I was done lying for her.”
“You said you were terrified she was going to kill herself with one of the kids in the room.”
“Yes.”
“And then three weeks later she called me.”
Daniel’s breathing slowed.
“Why you?”
“Because she knew you wouldn’t give her money.”
“For what?”
“Treatment. Debt. I don’t know. She said she needed sixty thousand dollars.”
“You gave her three times that.”
“I made another offer.”
Daniel stared at her.
“Say it.”
“I told her I would give her enough to start over somewhere else if she stopped fighting you.”
“Stopped fighting me how?”
“Custody. Contact. All of it.”
He felt briefly unsteady.
The polished wooden floor beneath him seemed to tilt, not from surprise but from the speed at which old memories were rearranging themselves.
Rachel’s last angry text to him had said, You got what you wanted.
He had thought she meant the emergency custody petition.
He had deleted the message months later because seeing it in the thread made him sick.
“You made that offer without telling me.”
“Yes.”
“And she accepted?”
Elise’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
Daniel looked toward the library.
No sound came from behind the door.
“What did you tell her I knew?”
Elise said nothing.
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her you agreed.”
The chandelier ticked again.
Daniel reached for the banister and rested his hand on it.
Elise started speaking faster.
“I knew you were going to file. I knew what your lawyer had said. I knew what the custody evaluator would see. I thought—”
“You told Rachel I agreed to buy her out of my children’s lives.”
“I told her you were done.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“At the time, it felt like it was.”
“To you.”
“Yes.”
“Did you forge anything?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
Too immediate.
Daniel watched her.
“Elise.”
“I did not forge your signature on a legal document.”
“That is not what I asked.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“There were emails.”
“From me?”
“They looked like they were from you.”
His hand came off the banister.
“What does that mean?”
“I created an address.”
For the first time, his controlled anger broke through.
“You created an address pretending to be me?”
She flinched.
He lowered his voice immediately.
“What did you send?”
“Three messages.”
“What did they say?”
“That you didn’t want direct contact. That I was handling logistics. That if she accepted the money, she had to stay away.”
Daniel took out his phone.
Elise’s eyes followed it.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Rachel.”
“You don’t have her number.”
“You do.”
“No.”
“You have an address from last week and a photograph she sent into this house.”
“I don’t have her current number.”
“Give me your phone.”
“No.”
The refusal was soft.
Daniel looked at her hand.
Her black clutch lay on the console table beside the front doors.
Her phone was probably inside.
“I’m not going to take it from you.”
“Good.”
“I am going to tell you what happens next. You give me the messages voluntarily, or I stop this conversation and call an attorney.”
“You’re threatening me.”
“I’m describing options.”
“You’re my husband.”
“Right now that is not helping you.”
Elise closed her eyes.
For several seconds she said nothing.
Then she walked to the console table, removed her phone from the clutch, unlocked it, and held it out.
May you like
Daniel did not take it.
“Open the messages.”
