Chapter 4: Everything She Built While I Was Away
Diana's chin came up.
"I wasn't watching you.
I was protecting myself."
"From what?
From me?"
"From the situation." She moved to the folding table and put her hand flat on the closed laptop.
"You don't understand what I was dealing with."
"Then explain it to me."
"You were pulling away.
After Maya came to live with us full-time, you changed.
You stopped seeing me.
You stopped seeing us."
"So you built a surveillance file and a secret bank account."
"I built security." Her voice was even.
Practiced.
"I needed to know where I stood."
I pointed at the shelf.
"You took an eight-year-old girl's stuffed bear.
The one her grandmother gave her before she d*ed.
That's not security.
That's cruelty."
"She had too many things.
She was taking over every room in that house."
"She's a child.
That is her house."
Diana's hand pressed harder on the laptop.
"It's our house, William.
Mine and yours.
Not hers."
The word landed like something dropped from a height.
I looked at the filing cabinets.
Four padlocks, all the same brand.
I looked at the safe in the corner.
I looked at the corkboard with its photographs and its dates and its careful, deliberate record of my movements.
"Open the cabinets," I said.
"No."
"Open them, Diana."
"You don't have the right to demand that.
This is my space.
My name is on the lease."
"Our money paid for whatever is in those cabinets.
Twelve thousand dollars of it went somewhere three days ago.
I have every right."
She straightened up.
"I want you to leave."
"I'm not leaving."
"Then I will." She picked up her bag from the corner of the table.
"I'll call my attorney in the morning.
We can sort out the finances through proper channels."
She said attorney the way people say it when they've already called one.
Not as a threat.
As a fact.
My phone buzzed.
I glanced at it.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*You don't know the half of it.
Check the bottom drawer of the second cabinet.
The small key is taped under the table.*
I looked up.
Diana was at the door.
I crouched down and ran my hand along the underside of the folding table.
My fingers found it immediately.
A small key, held with a strip of tape, exactly where the message said it would be.
Diana turned around and saw me holding it.
Her face went completely still.
"Who sent you that?" she said.
"I don't know."
"William—"
I walked to the second filing cabinet and tried the small key in the bottom drawer padlock.
It opened.
Inside was a single manila envelope.
Thick.
Sealed with a metal clasp.
My name was written on the front in handwriting I didn't recognize.
I looked at Diana.
She took one step back toward the door.
"Don't open that," she said.
Her voice had changed.
The practiced evenness was gone.
"Please.
William.
Don't open it."
I opened it.
The first page was a lease agreement.
A property I had never heard of.
A house in a town forty minutes north, leased eighteen months ago under Diana's maiden name.
The second page was a utility account.
Same address.
Same name.
The third page was a photograph.
Printed on plain paper, slightly blurry, the way phone photos look when they're taken quickly and at a distance.
Diana.
Standing in the doorway of a house I had never seen.
May you like
Smiling.
And beside her, a man I had also never seen, his hand on the small of her back, the two of them framed in the light of an open door like they were coming home.
