Chương 5
“You told my assistant not to give me her messages.”
“I told them not to pass along messages from someone who was becoming erratic.”
Rachel felt that word settle again.
Erratic.
Unstable.
Harassing.
Daniel had built a vocabulary around her so that any attempt to reach the truth became evidence of disorder.
Vanessa rose from the couch. “What else did you intercept?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t answer quickly.”
He blinked.
She repeated, “What else?”
Daniel looked toward Charles. “You should speak with your daughter.”
Charles’s face darkened. “Do not recruit me.”
“I’m not. But she is making decisions in a heightened emotional state.”
Vanessa stared at him. “You really can’t stop.”
“What?”
“Turning every woman who disagrees with you into a medical condition.”
Daniel picked up his water and drank, although the glass was nearly empty.
Evelyn stood. “This is enough for tonight.”
Vanessa looked at her mother. “Was there a wedding announcement scheduled?”
Evelyn’s silence answered.
“When?”
“We were discussing spring.”
“You booked something.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“A venue was being held.”
Rachel looked down at her hands.
She had not expected that detail to affect her. The gala was one thing—an engagement, a ring, a public claim. A wedding venue was another. It created dates, menus, flowers, a ceremony taking shape over the remains of one that had not legally ended.
“Where?” Vanessa asked.
Evelyn pressed her lips together. “Lake Como.”
Vanessa laughed once, without humor. “Of course.”
Charles checked his phone. “Pell is calling.”
He answered and put the call on speaker.
A tired male voice said, “Charles, what is this about?”
“Do you represent Daniel Cross in a divorce?”
Silence.
Daniel stepped forward. “Martin, do not discuss confidential matters.”
Pell’s voice changed. “Daniel?”
Charles said, “He is here. So is his legal wife.”
Another silence, longer this time.
Pell cleared his throat. “I had a preliminary consultation with Daniel last year.”
“Were you retained?”
“No.”
“Did you prepare a petition?”
“I sent a blank financial affidavit and a standard engagement letter. I never received the signed agreement or retainer.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Charles asked, “Did you file anything on his behalf?”
“No.”
“Did you provide him a case number?”
“Absolutely not.”
Daniel reached toward the phone. Charles pulled it away.
Pell continued, more awake now. “What happened?”
Charles looked at Daniel. “That is what we are determining.”
“Daniel,” Pell said, “do you need independent counsel?”
It was the first useful advice anyone had offered him all night.
Daniel said, “I’ll call you.”
Charles ended the call.
Vanessa removed the sapphire ring from her fist and placed it on the table beside the marriage certificate.
The ring landed without drama. A small click against polished wood.
Daniel looked at it.
“Vanessa.”
“No.”
“Listen to me.”
“I have listened to you for thirteen months.”
“I love you.”
Rachel felt the sentence physically, a quick pressure beneath her ribs.
Vanessa did not react at first. Then she looked at Rachel.
“Did he say that to you?”
Rachel could have lied. She could have spared herself or wounded Vanessa. Neither choice felt clean.
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Enough.”
Vanessa nodded as though confirming a figure in a report.
Daniel stepped toward her. “What I feel for you is real.”
She looked at the ring. “Maybe. That’s the worst part.”
He stopped.
Vanessa rubbed the indentation the sapphire had left on her finger. “You didn’t have to fake loving me. You just had to make it useful.”
“That is not fair.”
“No. Fair would have been finding out before three hundred people watched me wave your wife’s ring in her face.”
Rachel’s throat tightened.
Vanessa turned to her. “I’m sorry.”
The apology was so unexpected that Rachel almost rejected it.
She had spent the train ride rehearsing Vanessa as a type: rich, arrogant, complicit. It had been easier to imagine her as someone who deserved exposure.
But Vanessa’s hand was bare now, marked red where the engagement ring had pressed into her skin.
“You didn’t know,” Rachel said.
“I knew you existed.”
“You knew his version.”
“I believed it because it made my life easier.”
That was not innocence. It was more honest than innocence.
Rachel nodded once.
Charles walked to the windows and called someone from his board. He spoke in short sentences about suspending Daniel’s access to transaction materials pending review. Evelyn began gathering the unopened gifts from the dining table, then seemed to realize there were too many and stopped with a silver-wrapped box in her hands.
Daniel watched the room turn against him through procedure rather than outrage.
He looked at Rachel.
“What do you want?”
The question was quiet.
For years, he had asked it whenever he wished to reduce her pain to a demand he could satisfy or refuse. What do you want me to say? What do you want from me? What exactly would make you happy?
Rachel had once answered with paragraphs.
Now she said, “The truth on paper.”
“You already have the certificate.”
“I want the money returned. I want a complete financial disclosure. I want the divorce filed correctly. And I want you to stop telling people I’m unstable because I noticed what you did.”
“You came to my engagement party.”
“Your engagement party.”
The correction landed.
Daniel rubbed his thumb over his wedding band.
“I can transfer the money tomorrow.”
Rachel shook her head. “Through attorneys.”
“We don’t need to make this more adversarial.”
“It has been adversarial. I was the only one not informed.”
He looked at her with something that might have been regret if regret had not arrived so late.
“You could have called me.”
“I did.”
“You could have come to my office.”
“You had security remove me from the lobby.”
Vanessa looked at him sharply.
Daniel stared at Rachel. “You caused a scene.”
“I asked the receptionist whether you still worked there.”
“You refused to leave.”
“I had taken a train. I waited twelve minutes.”
“You were crying.”
May you like
The cruelty was almost casual.
Rachel felt the room tilt toward that old afternoon: the fluorescent lobby, the security guard who would not meet her eyes, the receptionist speaking in a soothing voice that made Rachel feel dangerous. She had cried after they asked her to leave, not before. She had cried on the sidewalk while office workers passed carrying salads.
