Chapter 7: What Marcus Wanted Me to Know
He showed up at nine the next morning without being invited.
I opened the door because I'd decided the night before that I needed to hear whatever he thought he had.
Daniel had told me to document everything.
So I stepped back and let him in and did not offer him coffee.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
Good.
"Where's Lily?" he said.
"With a neighbor.
She's not here for this conversation."
He nodded.
He stood in the living room and looked around at the deflated balloons still tied to the chairs from the party, the leftover cake on the counter, the camera sitting on the coffee table in a sealed plastic bag where Daniel's assistant had left it two hours earlier.
His eyes stopped on the bag.
"You lawyered up fast," he said.
"Talk," I said.
"You said there are things I don't know."
He sat down without being asked.
I stayed standing.
"Diane called me too," he said.
"That day.
Before she called her."
I waited.
"She wasn't just angry about the affair.
She'd found something else." He leaned forward, elbows on knees.
"She found out that the accident three years ago — your accident, the one that hurt your back — wasn't fully an accident."
The room felt very still.
"What does that mean?"
"The other driver.
The one who ran the light." He looked at his hands.
"He owed money to someone.
Someone who wanted you out of the picture long enough to — restructure some things.
Financially."
"Who?"
He didn't answer immediately.
"Marcus."
"Her father," he said.
"Your father-in-law.
He was in business with the other driver.
Diane found the paperwork.
Bank transfers, communications.
She photographed everything before she called me."
I sat down.
"She was going to go to the police," Marcus said.
"That's why she was driving.
She wasn't just upset about the affair — she was on her way to the station.
She called me first to tell me she knew.
Then she called her." He nodded toward the space where my wife had stood yesterday.
"And her father found out she'd made those calls."
"Her father." I said it slowly.
"Her father knew she was driving to the police."
Marcus looked at me directly for the first time since he'd walked in.
"I don't know what he did with that information.
I don't know if he called someone, or if it was just — timing.
I don't know, Ryan.
But Diane had those photographs on her phone.
And her phone was never recovered from the accident."
The silence stretched out.
"You've known this for two years," I said.
"I was scared."
"You were scared." I stood back up.
"My daughter has been in this house with a woman whose father may have arranged a car accident.
And you were scared."
"I didn't know what she was doing to Lily.
I swear I didn't know about the closet—"
"You told her not to leave marks." My voice came out very quiet.
"Three weeks ago.
I have it on the recording.
You told her to be more careful and not to leave marks."
His face went gray.
"I meant — I thought it was just — she said Lily was difficult, that she sometimes grabbed her arm too hard, I thought—"
"You thought." I walked to the front door and opened it.
"You're going to write down everything you just told me.
Every name, every date, everything about Diane's call and her father and the accident.
You're going to write it and sign it and you're going to give it to my lawyer."
"And if I do?"
"Then I'll let him decide what to do with you.
If you don't—" I looked at him.
"Then everything on that recording goes to the police today, including the part where you told her not to leave marks on my daughter.
And I'll let them decide."
He sat there for a long moment.
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a folded envelope.
"I wrote it last night," he said.
"I was going to give it to you either way." He set it on the table near the door.
"I'm sorry, Ryan.
I know that doesn't—"
"It doesn't," I said.
May you like
He walked out.
I picked up the envelope and called Daniel.
