Chương 4
Rachel laughed.
It came out wrong.
Daniel looked concerned.
“Mrs. Hayes?”
“My shoe.”
He stared.
“My stupid shoe is falling off.”
She started laughing harder.
Not because anything was funny.
Because for three months she had been careful about feeding schedules, pumping schedules, pediatric appointments, donor dinners, thank-you notes, Margaret’s advice, Derek’s temper, staff gossip, baby monitors, passwords, doors, tone of voice, facial expressions, and the exact amount of honesty a marriage could survive.
Now her husband had thrown her phone into champagne in front of a ballroom full of people, and the thing undoing her was a shoe.
Daniel glanced at the female security officer beside him.
She stepped forward.
“Do you want me to get it?”
Rachel nodded because she suddenly could not speak.
The officer picked up the shoe.
Rachel kicked off the other one.
Then she climbed the rest of the staircase barefoot.
In the nursery, Noah finally cried properly.
Rachel changed him out of his tiny formal outfit with hands that shook so badly she fastened one snap three times before getting it right. She put him in a cotton sleeper printed with blue whales.
He stopped crying as soon as she laid him on the changing table.
“You have terrible timing,” she told him.
Noah stared past her shoulder.
“That’s okay. You don’t know what timing is.”
His lower lip trembled.
“Please don’t start again.”
He started again.
Rachel picked him up.
For five minutes, the world narrowed to an infant who wanted to be fed.
That helped.
Babies did not care about property titles.
They did not care who chaired a foundation.
They did not care whether a seventy-one-year-old man owned a ballroom.
Noah cared that milk arrived.
Rachel sat in the upholstered chair beside the window and fed him while wearing one earring because the other had disappeared somewhere downstairs.
Her smartwatch vibrated.
She looked.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
For a second she did not understand.
Then she remembered Daniel.
The recording.
Rachel had created the new email account two weeks earlier from a public computer at the library, an act that had made her feel ridiculous at the time. She had been a museum collections registrar before marrying Derek. She had spent years cataloging seventeenth-century silver, damaged frames, provenance records, condition reports.
She believed in documentation.
She had not expected to need chain-of-custody habits in her marriage.
The nursery door opened.
Rachel stood so fast Noah lost his latch and screamed.
Edward stopped in the doorway.
“Sorry.”
Rachel covered herself, furious at the heat in her face.
“Knock.”
“I did.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“I’ll knock louder.”
He turned away.
The ridiculousness of it almost made her laugh again.
“Wait.”
Edward remained facing the hall.
Rachel adjusted her gown and Noah.
“Okay.”
He looked back.
For a moment neither spoke.
Up close, Edward looked older than he had downstairs. There were shadows beneath his eyes. His left hand trembled slightly before he slipped it into his trouser pocket.
Rachel had noticed the tremor at the bakery.
Derek had once referred to it as the old man’s reminder that biology eventually wins.
“What happened to your cheek?” Edward asked.
Rachel touched the scratch.
“Derek reached for Noah this afternoon. I turned. His ring caught me.”
Edward’s jaw tightened.
“He hit you?”
“No.”
“Did he intend to?”
“I don’t know.”
“That matters.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean the difference matters. Don’t make it worse for my benefit.”
Rachel stared at him.
Most people, once they decided Derek was dangerous, seemed eager for every detail to become evidence of the same conclusion.
Edward sat on the window bench.
“I spent too many years around attorneys. Words become permanent.”
“He grabbed my arm.”
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Hard?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone see?”
“Margaret.”
Edward exhaled.
Rachel gave a tired laugh.
“Useful witness.”
“She may surprise you.”
“I’m done hoping people surprise me.”
“That’s fair.”
Noah made a small satisfied sound.
Edward looked at him.
“I held Derek like that once.”
Rachel stiffened.
“Please don’t.”
Edward nodded.
“Sorry.”
Another pause.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“What do you want to happen?”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Making me decide everything.”
His mouth twitched, almost a smile.
“You’d prefer I tell you?”
“For five minutes? Yes.”
“All right.”
Edward folded his hands.
“You should leave somewhere Derek cannot enter freely. You should take what Noah needs for several days. You should speak to your own attorney, not mine. You should preserve the recording and any messages you consider relevant. You should not argue with Derek tonight. You should not sign anything. And you should sleep, although everyone who tells the mother of a three-month-old to sleep should probably be struck with a chair.”
Rachel looked at him.
“That was almost human.”
“I practice.”
She smiled before she could stop herself.
Then guilt followed.
Derek was downstairs.
Her marriage might be ending.
She was smiling.
Human emotions had terrible manners.
Edward looked toward the door.
“Security can drive you.”
“I already arranged someone.”
“Who?”
Rachel hesitated.
Then realized she did not owe him secrecy for its own sake.
“My friend Lena.”
Edward nodded.
Derek hated Lena Ortiz.
That had once seemed like a personality conflict.
Lena had been Rachel’s closest friend before the wedding. She was an emergency-room nurse with a talent for making expensive men uncomfortable by asking obvious questions.
The first time she met Derek, she had listened to him explain venture debt for nine minutes and then said, “So people pay you to make borrowing sound glamorous?”
Derek never forgave her.
Rachel had seen Lena only four times in the past year.
Three of those had been without telling Derek.
That fact sat heavily now.
Edward rose.
“There’s something else.”
Rachel waited.
“The house.”
She looked at him.
“Derek told you it was his?”
“For years.”
“It has never been his.”
“Why did you let him say it?”
Edward’s expression changed.
May you like
There were several possible answers. Rachel could see him choosing among them.
“Cowardice is probably the shortest.”
