Chapter 5: The Woman Who Walked Through the Front Door
Claire was at the top of the stairs before she had decided to move.
She came down slowly, one hand on the railing, and stopped on the fourth step from the bottom where she could see into the entryway without being fully visible herself.
Natalie Pierce was standing in her hallway.
She was wearing a cream-colored coat, her pale blond hair loose around her shoulders.
She looked like she hadn't slept.
Her eyes were red at the edges — not from crying, Claire thought, but from the particular exhaustion of a night spent rehearsing what to say.
Ethan stood between Natalie and the kitchen doorway.
His back was half-turned to Claire.
He hadn't heard her on the stairs.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
Low.
Controlled.
The voice he used in conference rooms.
"You didn't answer my calls."
"I told you I'd call you back."
"Ethan." Natalie's voice was quieter than Claire had expected.
There was no performance in it.
No drama.
Just a woman who was frightened.
"What's happening?
You said last night — you said it would be fine.
You said she didn't know everything."
"I was wrong."
"How wrong?"
He didn't answer.
Natalie looked past him.
She saw Claire on the stairs.
For a moment, none of them moved.
It was almost identical to the sidewalk outside the Halston Hotel — the same frozen tableau, the same rain-soaked wrongness, except that now they were standing in Claire's house, on Claire's hardwood floors, underneath the family photographs that still lined the entryway wall.
Claire came down the last four steps.
"Good morning," she said.
Natalie swallowed.
"I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have—"
"No," Claire agreed.
"You shouldn't have."
Ethan turned.
His expression was the careful blank he wore when two problems were competing for the same solution.
"Claire, let me handle this."
"You've been handling things for fourteen months." She moved past him to the kitchen doorway and leaned against the frame, arms crossed.
"I'll wait."
Ethan looked at Natalie.
"You need to go."
"I need to know what's happening." Natalie's voice cracked slightly on the last word.
"You told me last month that you were going to tell her.
That you were going to ask for a divorce.
You told me—"
"Natalie."
"You told me you were going to ask for a divorce in January.
It's March."
Claire looked at her husband.
He did not look at Claire.
"We'll talk later," he said to Natalie.
"Not here."
"There's a document," Natalie said.
"She has a document with my name on it.
You told me the consulting contract was clean.
You told me it would never—"
"Natalie.
Stop."
"Did you use client money?" Her voice was barely above a whisper now.
"Ethan.
Tell me the truth.
Did you use client money for my contract?"
The kitchen clock ticked.
Ethan said nothing.
Natalie turned toward the front door.
She stopped with her hand on the latch.
"I didn't know," she said.
She was speaking to Claire now, not to him.
Her voice was unsteady but direct.
"I want you to know that.
I didn't know where the money came from.
He told me it was a standard consulting arrangement.
I believed him."
Claire looked at her carefully.
She had spent eleven months constructing an image of this woman from photographs and financial records and secondhand accounts.
Standing four feet away, Natalie Pierce looked younger than that image.
And considerably more desperate.
"I believe you," Claire said.
Natalie blinked.
It was clearly not what she had expected.
She opened the front door and walked out.
The door closed behind her with a quiet, definitive click.
Ethan stood in the middle of the entryway without moving.
"She's going to talk to someone," he said.
Not to Claire.
To himself.
"Probably," Claire agreed.
"If she goes to the Hargrove family directly—"
"Then you have a much larger problem than a divorce." Claire pushed off the doorframe.
"Diana will be here in forty minutes.
I'd suggest you use the time to call Richard again."
She went back upstairs.
In the guest room, she could hear Ethan pacing.
Back and forth.
The particular rhythm of a man trying to outthink a situation that had already outgrown him.
She sat at her vanity.
Looked at her own face in the mirror.
She did not look devastated.
She looked like someone who had been ready for a long time and had simply been waiting for the right morning.
Her phone lit up on the dresser.
It wasn't Diana.
It was a number she didn't recognize.
She answered.
"Mrs.
Whitmore?" The voice was professional.
Measured.
May you like
"My name is Gregory Hargrove.
I think we need to talk about my family's investment in your husband's firm."
