Chapter 8: Saturday Morning
Marcus arrived at eight fifty-two.
Jasmine had been watching the driveway from the upstairs window.
She saw his car turn in and came downstairs before he reached the door.
David was in the kitchen with his second cup of coffee, reading something on his phone.
He looked up when Marcus walked in with Jasmine.
"Marcus." David set his mug down.
Surprised, but not unwelcoming.
"I didn't know you were coming by."
"I should have called ahead," Marcus said.
"But I needed to talk to you about something.
Both of you." He glanced at Jasmine.
"Can we sit down?"
Something in Marcus's voice pulled David's expression into a careful attention.
"Sure," David said slowly.
"Everything okay?"
"Not entirely," Marcus said.
They sat at the kitchen table.
Marcus placed his phone face-up between them.
The photograph was already on the screen.
David looked at it.
He looked at it for a long time without speaking.
"That's Anne," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"And that's—" David's voice changed.
The word didn't come out.
"That's Jessica," Jasmine said quietly.
David picked up the phone.
He brought it closer.
His thumb moved slightly as if he might enlarge the image, and then he stopped.
"This was taken before I met her," he said.
"Two years before Mom passed," Jasmine said.
"And four years before Jessica introduced herself to you."
David put the phone down slowly.
"There's an explanation," he said.
"There has to be an explanation."
"There might be," Marcus said.
"And we're going to give her every chance to give one.
But Dad, I need you to hear everything first.
All of it.
Before she walks back through that door."
For a moment David looked like he might stand up.
Like he might find a reason to leave the table.
His hand moved to his coffee mug and then away.
Then he looked at his daughter's face.
He sat back.
"Tell me," he said.
Marcus talked for twenty minutes.
Robert's statement.
Gary's account.
The pattern across two relationships.
The financial scheme.
The leverage Jessica kept on people who knew too much.
The life insurance amount and the evidence that Jessica had known Anne, had known the family, had positioned herself long before David ever thought she'd appeared in his life.
David listened without interrupting.
When Marcus finished, the kitchen was very quiet.
"She told me she'd never met Anne," David said.
His voice was low and careful.
"First week we were together.
I asked her directly if she'd known Anne through anyone.
She said no."
"Dad," Jasmine said gently.
"She looked me in the eye," he said.
He stood up and walked to the kitchen window.
He stood there with his back to them, both hands on the counter's edge.
"Say something," Jasmine said softly.
He turned around.
His face was not the face of a man who had been broken.
It was the face of a man who had decided something.
"When does she get back?" he said.
"Around noon," Jasmine said.
David checked the clock on the wall.
May you like
"Then we have time," he said.
"Marcus, I need you to stay."
