Chương 3
I know you’re trying to do the right thing.
Pregnancy makes everything feel more urgent than it is.
After the courthouse:
You married her without telling anyone?
His reply:
We told the people who needed to know.
Vanessa:
Apparently I’m not one of them anymore.
Daniel:
Don’t do this.
Vanessa:
I’m asking a question.
Daniel:
No. You’re making my marriage about you.
That message surprised Emma.
She scrolled farther.
Vanessa had replied:
You said you couldn’t imagine your life without me.
The message was dated two years earlier than Daniel’s relationship with Emma.
Emma stopped.
“What was she talking about?”
Daniel sat down.
“We were in California. After my father died.”
“You and Vanessa were together.”
“Yes.”
“I know that.”
“You know we dated. You don’t know all of it.”
Emma handed the phone back.
“Apparently.”
Daniel rubbed the inside of his thumb against the edge of the case.
“We were together for about eight months. It ended badly. Then Dad died three weeks later. She came back. Helped with the company. My mother was barely functioning. I wasn’t much better.”
“You got back together.”
“No.”
“Did she think you did?”
A pause.
“For a while, maybe.”
Emma stared at him.
“Daniel.”
“I never slept with her again.”
“I didn’t ask that.”
“No. You asked the harder question.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“I let her believe she mattered to me in a way she probably shouldn’t have believed.”
“Because she did?”
“Yes.”
Emma looked away.
There were moments in a marriage when a truthful answer could hurt more than a lie because it did not give you anything clean to fight.
Daniel continued.
“She was the person who took calls when I couldn’t. She kept my mother from selling half the company to the first private equity guy who smiled at her. She sat in the kitchen at three in the morning and made me eat toast. I told her I didn’t know what I would do without her.”
“And she heard a promise.”
“I think so.”
“What did you mean?”
“That I was drowning.”
Emma let out a long breath.
“And then you got better.”
“Somewhat.”
“And she stayed.”
“Yes.”
“And you never made the boundary clear.”
“I thought I had.”
Emma looked at him.
Daniel corrected himself.
“I told myself I had.”
That was closer.
His phone buzzed.
Both of them looked at it.
Vanessa.
Daniel did not answer.
The buzzing stopped.
Ten seconds later, a message appeared.
Please don’t do anything until we talk.
Emma stared at the screen.
Then another.
You know what really happened.
Daniel’s mouth hardened.
He stood.
“I’m calling the police.”
Emma’s stomach tightened.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“What?”
“I said no.”
“She assaulted you.”
“I know.”
“We have a recording.”
“I know.”
“Then what are we doing?”
Emma closed her eyes.
“Not letting you decide for me while I’m wearing a hospital bracelet.”
The words landed harder than she intended.
Daniel sat down again.
“Okay.”
She opened her eyes.
“I want to see the recording first.”
His expression changed.
“Emma.”
“I need to.”
“You were there.”
“That’s not the same.”
He hesitated.
“What if you don’t need that image in your head?”
“It already is.”
Daniel looked down.
Emma continued more quietly.
“I keep seeing the moment before I fell. I keep wondering if I stepped wrong. I know what happened, but my brain keeps—”
She stopped.
He waited.
“I want to know I didn’t imagine the heel.”
“You didn’t.”
“I want to see it.”
Helen called from the mansion before Daniel could answer.
She had locked the house and moved the security recording onto an encrypted drive after speaking with the system company. She had not watched the whole clip. She had only confirmed that the camera was active and that the relevant time period existed.
“Don’t send it to anyone,” Daniel told her.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Helen said. “And before you ask, Vanessa’s service code is disabled.”
Daniel glanced at Emma.
“Thank you.”
Helen lowered her voice.
“How is she?”
“I’m here,” Emma said.
There was a pause.
“Mrs. Carter?”
“Helen, I’m fine enough to be annoyed when people talk about me like I’m dead.”
“Good.”
Emma could hear the relief.
“The doctors are keeping me overnight.”
“I’ll bring you clothes.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
That was Helen.
She hung up.
Emma looked at Daniel.
“Did you hear the difference?”
“What difference?”
“She changed the code.”
Daniel understood.
Emma turned her face toward the window.
She was angry at Vanessa for the rug.
She was angrier at Daniel for something less dramatic and therefore harder to explain: the years of small permissions that had allowed Vanessa to behave as if she still occupied a protected room inside his life.
He had not pulled the rug.
Emma knew that.
But he had kept telling everybody the floor was safe.
Helen arrived shortly after six with a canvas overnight bag, Emma’s toothbrush, a clean robe, phone charger, and a pair of soft socks with ridiculous yellow ducks on them.
Emma held them up.
“Those were in the back of the drawer.”
“I panicked.”
“So you chose ducks?”
“I make poor decisions under pressure.”
For the first time since the fall, Emma smiled properly.
Helen set the bag down.
Then she remained standing.
Daniel noticed.
“What?”
Helen looked at Emma.
“May I tell you something that might matter?”
Emma’s smile disappeared.
“Please.”
“Vanessa arrived at the house at eleven seventeen this morning.”
“That early?”
The gathering was not supposed to begin until three.
Helen nodded.
“She said she was meeting the florist.”
“She wasn’t,” Daniel said.
“I know that now.”
Helen folded her hands.
“I was in the pantry with the caterer when she came in. I heard her upstairs later. I didn’t think anything of it because she’s been in that house more years than I have.”
Emma looked at the blanket.
“Did she move the rug?”
May you like
“I don’t know.”
“Did anyone see her near the camera?”
