Chapter 7: The Woman in Westport
Arthur drove.
I had offered to go alone, but he had looked at me in the way he'd been looking at me since Friday — not protective exactly, more like careful — and said he'd drive.
Dana Firth lived in a gray-shingled colonial at the end of a quiet street in Westport, Connecticut.
There was a real estate agency sign on the mailbox post — her own name on it.
The garden was well-kept.
A wreath on the door made of dried eucalyptus.
I noticed the eucalyptus.
She opened the door before we knocked.
Dana Firth was around forty, with careful posture and the kind of face that had probably been very pretty ten years ago and was now something more complicated.
She looked at me first, then at Arthur, then back at me.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"Please come in."
The house was neat and impersonal in the way that houses are when someone has been staging them for so long they've forgotten how to live in them differently.
We sat in the living room.
She didn't offer coffee.
"I want to say something before anything else," she said.
"I didn't know about you.
I didn't know he was married — not for the first two years."
I looked at her.
"When did you find out?"
"A friend saw a photo.
A charity event — Julian was in it, and you were beside him, and the caption had both your names." She folded her hands in her lap.
"I confronted him.
He said the marriage was over in every way that mattered.
That you lived separate lives.
That it was a financial arrangement he was trying to exit."
"And you believed him."
She held my gaze.
"For a while.
Then I started noticing things.
He would cancel plans without explanation.
He would go quiet for days and then reappear.
I asked him to leave you.
He always had a reason why the timing wasn't right." A pause.
"I'm not asking for your sympathy.
I'm telling you what I knew and when I knew it because I think you deserve the accurate version."
"What did he say when he called Friday night?" I asked.
Dana looked at her hands.
"He said there was a situation.
That his wife's brother had shown up with documents and that things were going to get complicated.
He asked me to say, if anyone asked, that the Connecticut property was a pure investment — that we were business partners, nothing more."
"He asked you to lie."
"Yes."
"And you called Arthur's office instead."
"Yes." She looked up.
"I have a daughter.
She's nine.
Her father — her actual father, my ex-husband — is a good man, and she spends every other week with him, and she knows nothing about Julian.
I am not going to commit fraud to protect a man who just spent a phone call telling me to clean up his mess." Her voice was steady but there was something underneath it, something that had been burning for a while.
"I'm done."
Arthur leaned forward.
"Ms.
Firth, I need to ask you directly — did Julian ever tell you where the money for the Connecticut property came from?"
"He said it was from a business deal he'd closed.
A commission."
"Did he show you documentation?"
"No.
I didn't ask for it.
I should have." She paused.
"I'm not naive.
I'm a real estate agent — I know what a forged document looks like.
I just didn't look." She said it plainly, without self-pity.
"I didn't look because I didn't want to."
The room was quiet.
I had come to Westport expecting to feel something sharp and clean — anger, maybe, or the satisfaction of confronting the other side of a lie.
Instead I felt something harder to name.
Dana Firth had been lied to in different words than I had, but she had been lied to by the same man using the same method: tell her what she needed to hear and count on her not to look too closely.
"Will you speak to my attorney?" I asked.
"Yes," she said immediately.
"Whatever she needs.
Bank records, texts, anything." She paused.
"Julian has a storage unit in Norwalk.
He keeps documents there — physical copies.
He mentioned it once, something about keeping backups off-site.
I don't know what's in it."
Arthur and I looked at each other.
"Do you know the facility?" Arthur asked.
"SecureStore on Route 1.
He used to stop there when he drove up from the city." She reached into a drawer in the side table and produced a small key on a plain ring.
"He left a spare here.
He said it was in case he ever needed me to pick something up."
She held it out.
I took it.
"Ms.
Firth," Arthur said carefully, "Julian will know you spoke to us."
"I know." She looked at the space where the key had been.
"He called me to ask me to lie for him.
He didn't ask how I was.
He didn't ask about my daughter." She was quiet for a moment.
"He never asked about my daughter."
We left her sitting in the staged living room of her gray-shingled house, and I carried the key in my closed hand all the way back to the car.
"The storage unit," Arthur said as he started the engine.
"Yes," I said.
"We can't go in without—"
"I know.
Grace will know how to handle it." I looked at the key.
Small and ordinary.
The kind of key that could open almost anything.
"Valerie." Arthur pulled out of the driveway.
"Are you all right?"
I thought about Dana Firth's face when she said *he never asked about my daughter.*
"I think," I said slowly, "that Julian has been doing this for a very long time.
To a lot of people."
Arthur didn't answer.
But he didn't disagree.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Julian's number.
*I know you went to Westport.
We need to talk before this goes any further.
There are things in that storage unit that will hurt people you care about.
Think carefully.*
I read it twice.
Then I forwarded it to Grace.
She replied in under a minute.
*Perfect.
Don't respond.
That's a threat and it's now evidence.
I'll call you in an hour.*
I put the phone in my bag and watched Connecticut move past the window.
May you like
He was trying to make me afraid of what he was hiding.
He had forgotten that I was the one holding the key.
