Chapter 4: The Locked Drawer
I picked up the letter.
Dr.
Harmon's letterhead.
A Manhattan address.
The date in the upper right corner was exactly what Evelyn had said — four months after our divorce was finalized.
But the postmark on the envelope, still attached, told a different story.
The letter had been sent three weeks before Luca asked me for the divorce.
My hands were steady.
I don't know how.
"This was sent to our penthouse address," I said.
"I never received it."
"No," Evelyn said.
"You didn't."
I looked at Luca.
"You intercepted it."
"Nia — "
"You knew.
You knew I was pregnant and you still stood in that kitchen and told me you didn't love me."
"It wasn't — " He stopped.
Started again.
"I didn't know what to do with it."
"You didn't know what to do with it." I set the letter down.
"I sat in a hospital alone at eleven weeks.
I sat there at every appointment after that.
I delivered two children without a single person in that room who should have been there.
And you didn't know what to do with a piece of paper."
"I was afraid," he said.
"Of what?"
"That you'd stay because of them.
Not because of me." His voice dropped.
"Someone had told me you'd been seeing someone else.
That the children might not be mine.
I didn't know what was true anymore."
The room tilted slightly.
"Who told you that?"
He didn't answer immediately.
"Luca.
Who told you I was seeing someone else?"
"Marcus," he said.
"My CFO.
He said he'd seen you with someone.
At a hotel.
He had a photo."
Marcus Hale.
I knew the name.
I had met him twice at company dinners.
He had shaken my hand both times with a smile that never reached his eyes.
"There was no one else," I said.
"There was never anyone else."
"I know that now."
"Do you?
Because it sounds like you made a choice to believe a man who handed you a reason to leave, and then you hid a letter that would have made leaving harder." I stepped back from the table.
"That's not fear, Luca.
That's a decision."
Evelyn had not moved.
She was watching her husband with an expression I recognized — the look of a woman assembling a picture she had suspected for a long time but hoped she was wrong about.
"Marcus Hale," she said slowly.
"He was at our wedding."
"Yes," Luca said.
"He gave a toast."
"Evelyn — "
"He said you were the most honorable man he'd ever worked with." She picked up her water glass.
Set it down without drinking.
"I'd like to see that photograph, Luca.
The one he showed you of Nia."
Luca said nothing.
"You don't have it anymore, do you," Evelyn said.
It was not a question.
"Marcus handled it."
"Of course he did." She looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Nia.
I don't say that lightly and I don't expect it to mean much.
But I am sorry."
I looked at the letter still on the table between us.
Six years.
Two children who had never heard their father's name spoken in their own home.
A man who had chosen to believe a lie because the lie was easier than the truth.
"Where is Marcus Hale now?" I asked.
"Still at Moretti Global," Luca said.
"Senior VP.
He runs three divisions."
I picked up my bag from the back of my chair.
"Then we're not finished," I said.
"Not even close."
I walked toward the door where my children were waiting.
May you like
Behind me, I heard Evelyn say to Luca in a voice like cold water:
"You should have told me."
