Chapter 4: The Second Set of Books
Mark cut the rope around Lucy's wrists with a kitchen knife from the block near the stove.
His hands were steady.
His face was not.
Jack didn't let go of his mother's arm even as Mark worked.
"Can you stand?" Mark asked her.
"Yes."
He helped her up anyway.
She was stiff from the cold, her legs uncertain under her.
She gripped the steel shelf on her way out of the freezer and didn't make a sound about the pain.
Diane hadn't moved from her position near the counter.
"Mark." Her voice was careful now.
Measured.
"I know how this looks.
But you need to hear my side before you do anything you can't take back."
"The office," Mark said.
He wasn't looking at her.
"Where's the laptop?"
"There's nothing on that laptop that—"
"Where is it, Diane?"
She pressed her lips together.
"Upstairs.
But I'm telling you, whatever Lucy told you, she has been trying to destroy this marriage since before it started.
You know that.
You know what she was like."
Lucy said nothing.
She was standing on her own now, one hand still on Jack's shoulder.
"Jack," Mark said.
"Stay with your mom."
He walked toward the stairs at the back of the kitchen.
Diane moved to follow him.
"I'll come with you—"
"No." He stopped without turning around.
"You stay here."
He went up alone.
The kitchen was very quiet.
The refrigeration units clicked and hummed.
Outside, a car passed on the street.
Ethan was still by the back door.
He had his phone in his hand, screen dark, and he was looking at Lucy.
"Are you okay?" he said.
It was such a simple question.
Lucy's face did something complicated.
"I've been better," she said.
"I heard her," Ethan said.
"When she locked you in.
I was here that night.
I was closing up and I heard — I heard something, but she told me it was the pipes.
She told me the freezer compressor was making noise." He stopped.
"I should have said something.
I didn't know."
"You were a kid," Lucy said.
"You are a kid."
"I'm going to tell them," he said.
"Whatever you need me to say.
I was here.
I heard it."
Diane turned toward him.
"You heard nothing."
"I heard you tell her that if she ever told anyone, you'd say she attacked you." Ethan's voice was steady in a way that seemed to surprise even him.
"I heard that part pretty clearly."
Diane's expression went flat.
Upstairs, a door opened.
Then another.
Then the sound of a chair rolling across a wood floor.
They waited.
When Mark came back down the stairs, he was carrying a laptop.
He set it on the stainless steel prep table and turned the screen toward Diane.
"Tell me what this is."
The spreadsheet was open.
Two columns.
Two sets of figures.
The restaurant's declared income on the left.
A second column on the right, running alongside it for thirty-seven months, that didn't match.
Diane looked at the screen.
She looked at Mark.
She said nothing.
"That's Jack's college fund," Mark said.
"I set it up three years ago.
Automatic transfers from the restaurant account.
Twelve hundred dollars a month." His voice didn't rise.
"There's nine hundred dollars in it."
Lucy watched Diane's face.
"It was a cash flow issue," Diane said.
"I was going to replace it—"
"Forty-three thousand dollars," Mark said.
"Where did it go?"
Diane's hand was still on the dish towel.
She let it go.
"I want to call my lawyer," she said.
May you like
Mark picked up his phone.
This time, Diane didn't try to stop him.
