Chapter 7: The Backup Plan
Amy got up from the table and went to the bedroom.
I heard the closet door open, then the sound of a box being moved.
She came back carrying a manila envelope, the kind with a metal clasp, and set it on the table between us.
"She sent this to me three months ago," Amy said.
"Certified mail.
No return address, but I recognized the handwriting." She sat down.
"She told me on the phone the same day it arrived — if I ever went to you, she would send a copy to your office, to your project manager, and to your bank."
I opened the clasp and pulled out the contents.
Photographs.
Printed emails.
A two-page typed document with my name at the top.
The photographs showed Amy at a coffee shop with a man I didn't recognize.
Three different dates printed in the corner.
The printed emails were conversations between an address I had never seen and the same man — affectionate, familiar, the kind of language that looked like more than friendship.
The typed document was a timeline.
Dates, locations, descriptions.
It read like a private investigator's report.
I looked at the photographs for a long time.
"I don't know him," Amy said.
Her voice was steady.
"I have never seen that man in my life.
I don't know where those photos came from or how she made the emails look real." She folded her hands on the table.
"But I knew that if I showed you this without any context, without any warning, there would be a moment — even a short one — where you wondered.
And she was counting on that moment."
I set the photographs down.
"I'm not wondering," I said.
"Connor—"
"I'm not wondering," I said again.
"I watched my mother's face when she heard you say your father was at that funeral.
She didn't react.
That's not someone who made a mistake.
That's someone who doesn't care what's true." I pushed the envelope to the side.
"She built this to use against you.
That's all it is."
Amy looked at me for a long moment.
Then something in her face changed — not dramatically, not a collapse, just a quiet shift, like a door that had been held shut for a very long time finally being allowed to rest against its frame.
"I was so afraid," she said.
"Every time she called.
Every time she came over.
I smiled and I said the right things and then I went to the bathroom and I shook." Her voice didn't break.
"I didn't tell you because I thought you'd think I was trying to come between you and your mother.
And I didn't want to be that person."
"You were protecting me," I said.
"I was protecting us.
I didn't know if it would work."
I picked up the envelope and handed it to her.
"This goes to Calloway tomorrow.
Along with everything else."
Amy took it.
"There's something else," she said.
"In the envelope.
Behind the photographs."
I hadn't gotten that far.
She reached in and pulled out a single folded page.
A handwritten note, Teresa's handwriting, addressed to Amy.
*You will never be his family.
You can leave quietly now, or I will make sure you leave with nothing.
Your choice.
You have until the end of the year.*
The note was dated nine months ago.
Three months before Frederick was born.
I read it twice.
Then I folded it carefully and set it on top of the photographs.
"She wrote that when you were pregnant," I said.
"Six months along," Amy said.
"I didn't sleep for two weeks after it arrived."
I thought about those two weeks.
I tried to remember if I had noticed anything.
If Amy had seemed different.
If I had asked.
I couldn't remember asking.
"I'm going to call Calloway now," I said.
"Tonight.
This doesn't wait until morning."
Amy nodded.
I picked up my phone.
Before I dialed, Amy put her hand on my arm.
"Connor.
Whatever happens next — with the police, with the lawyers, with your family — I need you to know that I don't regret any of it.
Not marrying you.
Not Frederick.
Not any of it." She looked at me directly.
"But I need it to be over.
I need her to not be able to do this again.
To us or to anyone."
"It's going to be over," I said.
I meant it.
May you like
But I didn't yet know what Teresa was planning from whatever room she was sitting in at that hour, waiting for morning, with a lawyer she hadn't called yet and a backup plan she still believed in.
I found out the next day.
