Chapter 7: Telling Ellen
I drove home slowly.
I sat in the driveway for a few minutes before going inside.
Ellen was in the kitchen when I came through the door.
She had made dinner — something simple, pasta, the kind she made when she didn't want to think about what she was cooking.
She looked up when she heard me.
She read my face immediately.
"Sit down," she said.
"Ellen—"
"Sit down, Robert.
I'll get you some water and you'll tell me."
I sat.
She set a glass in front of me and stood on the other side of the counter, arms folded loosely, watching me.
"How bad?" she asked.
"Bad."
"Tell me."
I told her.
All of it.
The shell companies.
Hartwell Consulting.
Cassandra's name on the registration.
The fourteen months of payments.
The total.
Ellen didn't speak while I talked.
She stood very still.
When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
"She planned it before the wedding," Ellen said.
"Yes."
"Before she ever walked into our house as his wife."
"Yes."
Ellen turned and looked out the window above the sink.
The garden was dark now.
Just the outline of the hedges against the evening sky.
"I made her tea," she said quietly.
"The first time Michael brought her here.
I made her tea and showed her the garden and told her she was welcome in our home."
I didn't say anything.
"She sat at that table." Ellen didn't turn around.
"She said the garden was beautiful.
She asked me how long we'd lived here." A pause.
"She was already planning it."
"We don't know exactly when—"
"She incorporated the company six weeks before the wedding, Robert.
She knew what she was doing." Ellen turned back.
Her eyes were dry but her voice was tight.
"And Michael helped her.
He gave her the access.
He knew what the budget line was for.
He knew he didn't have authority."
"Yes."
"He chose her over us.
Not just at the wedding.
Before it.
A year before it."
I couldn't argue with that.
She came around the counter and sat down across from me.
She looked at the table for a moment, then at me.
"What happens to them?"
"Diana is drafting a referral to the authorities.
And the termination papers."
"Criminal charges."
"Possibly.
Likely, given the amounts and the structure."
She absorbed that.
"And the money?"
"We'll pursue repayment through the legal process.
We may not recover all of it."
She nodded slowly.
Then she did something I hadn't expected.
She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Ellen.
You have nothing to be sorry for."
"I brought him into the world.
I raised him." Her voice was steady but her hand pressed down on mine.
"I know that's not how it works.
I know it's not my fault.
But I'm still sorry.
For what he is.
For what he did to you.
To the company.
To us."
My throat tightened.
"He did it to you too," I said.
"I know." She didn't move her hand.
"But you built that company.
You spent thirty years building it.
And he sat inside it and took from it and laughed at you on the phone this morning."
I looked at her hand on mine.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
She considered the question seriously, the way she always did.
"No," she said.
"But I will be." She squeezed my hand once.
"Do what needs to be done, Robert.
I'm not asking you to protect him anymore."
I looked at her.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." She stood up and went back to the stove.
"Now eat something.
You haven't eaten all day."
May you like
I watched her move around the kitchen — careful with her arm, steady in everything else — and I thought about the woman Cassandra had called cheap and tacky.
Cassandra had never understood what she was looking at.
