Chương 7
“That isn’t a reason.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“I liked the money.”
The bluntness silenced him.
Claire looked away.
“I liked ordering Sophie new shoes without checking our account first. I liked paying my mother’s dental bill. I liked not feeling poor for ten minutes. Grant made it sound harmless, and I wanted it to be harmless.”
Damian sat very still.
“Then what happened?”
“I stopped.”
“When?”
“About fourteen months ago.”
“Why?”
“I found out he hadn’t stopped.”
Damian’s gaze narrowed.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Estimate.”
“A lot.”
“Define a lot.”
“Maybe two hundred thousand.”
Damian exhaled.
Claire gave him a tired look.
“Now you can fire me.”
“Why did he lock you in the room?”
“He said I was unstable.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
She pressed her lips together.
Then she started again.
“When I told him I wanted to leave, he reminded me what I had done. He said if I left, he’d give you everything. Copies of transfers. My logins. Messages where I agreed.”
“Did he have them?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He controlled our accounts. Our home computer. My phone whenever he wanted it.”
Damian’s fingers tightened.
Claire noticed.
“There,” she said.
“What?”
“Simple again.”
He released his hands.
“Keep going.”
She looked almost annoyed that he had listened.
“The room started as a punishment.”
Damian said nothing.
“He never called it that. He said I needed to calm down when we argued. The first time was maybe forty minutes. Then a few hours. Later he started locking it overnight.”
“Did he hit you?”
“Sometimes.”
“How often?”
“I’m not doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Giving you a clean list so you can decide what category I fit in.”
Damian sat back.
Claire’s breathing was shallow.
He lowered his voice.
“You don’t owe me a clean list.”
She looked at him.
“Then stop asking like a form.”
The shame was immediate.
Damian nodded once.
“All right.”
Claire stared at the carpet.
After a while she said, “He didn’t beat me every day. He wasn’t drunk. He didn’t come home screaming. Most of the time he made dinner. He packed Sophie’s lunch better than I did. He remembered dentist appointments. He could be funny.”
Her mouth trembled.
“That’s the part people hate.”
“What part?”
“When you say the person who hurt you wasn’t horrible every minute.”
Damian looked at the shelves behind her.
“My father was like that.”
Claire’s eyes lifted.
He regretted the sentence immediately.
Not because it was untrue.
Because it felt like theft, using his history to buy trust.
He corrected himself.
“Sorry. That wasn’t relevant.”
“Maybe it was.”
He waited.
Claire tucked loose hair behind one ear.
“He said the room kept me from making bad decisions. If I tried to leave the property after an argument, he’d take my phone and put me there. Sometimes he’d sit outside the door and talk to me.”
“What would he say?”
“That I was ruining Sophie’s life. That you’d prosecute me. That no judge would give a thief custody.”
Damian did not interrupt.
Claire’s eyes remained on the carpet.
“I knew some of it was probably nonsense. But knowing something is nonsense at noon is different from knowing it at two in the morning when somebody has locked the door.”
The room went quiet.
From the courtyard came the buzz of a leaf blower.
Claire winced at the noise.
Damian nearly called someone to stop it.
Then he stopped himself.
Not everything needed to move around his feelings.
“When did Sophie find out?” he asked.
“Three months ago.”
“How?”
“She woke up and came looking for me.”
“And Grant?”
“Told her I was sick.”
Claire rubbed her forehead.
“I made it worse.”
“How?”
“I told her to go back to bed.”
“That seems understandable.”
“I told her Grant was helping me.”
Damian said nothing.
“She looked at me like I’d betrayed her.”
“She’s seven.”
“I know how old my child is.”
“That came out wrong.”
“Yes.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“That gets annoying too.”
He almost smiled.
“Noted.”
She stood.
“I’m going to take Sophie and leave today.”
“Where?”
“My sister’s.”
“Does Grant know where she lives?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you’re safe there?”
Claire hesitated.
“That’s not the same question as where I’m going.”
“No.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Trying to solve it?”
“Yes.”
He looked down at the papers on his desk.
“That is more or less what I do.”
“I know.”
She walked to the door.
“Claire.”
She turned.
“What do you want me to do about the money you took?”
Her face went pale.
Damian hated the question but not asking it would have been another form of pretending.
“I don’t know.”
“Think about it.”
“Are you going to call police?”
“I don’t know.”
Her mouth twisted.
“You can say yes.”
“I can also say I don’t know when I don’t know.”
She looked at him for several seconds.
Then she nodded.
“Fair.”
At the door she stopped.
“Mr. Cross?”
“Damian.”
“No.”
He almost laughed.
She continued.
“Grant was right about one thing.”
“That narrows it down.”
“You weren’t here.”
The door closed.
Damian sat alone.
The leaf blower continued outside.
He had never hated landscaping more.
By noon the household had become an awkward combination of workplace, temporary shelter, investigation site, and gossip factory.
Four employees called out sick.
Two more requested meetings.
A cook named Denise told human resources that Grant had once changed her time sheet after she refused a weekend shift.
A groundskeeper said Grant borrowed five thousand dollars from him and never repaid it.
A driver insisted Grant was “a hard bastard but fair.”
People who had worked beside the same man for years began producing different versions of him.
Damian listened.
He had expected revelation.
Instead he got mess.
Some staff defended Grant because he had helped their families.
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Others seemed eager to blame him for every unpleasant thing that had happened since 2020.
One woman cried because Grant once sent flowers when her father died.
