Chapter 3
Daniel reached for the flash drive again.
Lauren stepped between us.
“Back up.”
“Give me that.”
Daniel’s voice was no longer calm.
He wasn’t trying to look innocent anymore.
He looked scared.
That told me everything I needed to know.
I closed my fist around the drive.
“What’s on it?”
Richard answered.
“Emails. Bank records. Internal company transfers.”
Daniel pointed at him.
“You stole private corporate information.”
Richard didn’t blink.
“I’m an investor in the company.”
“That doesn’t give you the right—”
“You lost the right to lecture anyone about rights when you forged your wife’s signature.”
Patricia suddenly stood.
“Stop!”
Everyone looked at her.
Her hands were trembling.
“This is Daniel’s birthday.”
Lauren stared at her in disbelief.
“Are you kidding me?”
Patricia looked at me.
“Emily, I’m not saying what he did was right.”
I almost laughed.
There it was.
The sentence people used right before explaining why something terrible was somehow understandable.
“But?”
Patricia swallowed.
“But marriages have problems. Daniel made mistakes. Madison made mistakes. You threw wine in her face.”
My jaw dropped.
Lauren actually laughed.
“You’re comparing wine to stealing nearly a million dollars?”
Patricia’s voice rose.
“I’m saying screaming in a restaurant isn’t helping anybody!”
I looked at her.
“You knew.”
Her lips parted.
“You knew about the affair.”
She looked away.
“How long?”
“Emily—”
“How long?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Since Christmas.”
It was August.
Eight months.
Eight months of Sunday dinners.
Eight months of birthday calls.
Eight months of Patricia sitting in my kitchen drinking coffee while asking me whether Daniel and I were thinking about children.
Eight months of her knowing her son was sleeping with another woman.
I stepped toward her.
“And you kept coming into my house.”
She started crying.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You could have told me.”
“He begged me not to.”
“And that was enough?”
“He said he was confused.”
I stared at her.
“No. He wasn’t confused.”
I pointed toward Madison.
“He bought her a condo.”
Madison shifted uncomfortably.
“He was organized.”
Daniel moved between us.
“Leave my mother out of this.”
Something inside me went quiet.
I looked at him.
“You want me to leave your mother out of this?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
I raised the flash drive.
“Then we’ll talk about this.”
Daniel’s eyes locked onto it.
“I need to know where that information came from.”
“You need a lawyer.”
His face hardened.
“Don’t threaten me.”
“That wasn’t a threat.”
Lauren reached for my purse.
“Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“Because he might have access to your accounts.”
I handed it over.
Her fingers moved quickly across the screen.
Daniel noticed.
“What are you doing?”
“Changing passwords.”
He stepped forward.
“That’s our account.”
Lauren didn’t look up.
“Which one?”
“Our checking account.”
“Interesting.”
She looked at me.
“Emily, did you hear that?”
“I did.”
Daniel’s face reddened.
“I mean the household account.”
Lauren continued typing.
“You may want to choose your words very carefully from now on.”
Madison suddenly picked up the condo keys.
“This is insane.”
I looked at her.
“You can leave.”
She blinked.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then stay.”
I glanced at her stained dress.
“But stop pretending you’re the victim.”
Her face twisted.
“You think I knew everything?”
“I think you pulled my chair out from under me in front of an entire table.”
“You’ve hated me since the day we met.”
“I met you four months ago.”
Madison laughed.
“No, Emily.”
Daniel’s eyes closed again.
I felt it.
Another secret.
“When did you meet me?”
She stared at me.
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Your fundraiser.”
I tried to think.
I organized an annual fundraiser for a literacy nonprofit.
Hundreds of people attended.
Sponsors.
Volunteers.
Local business owners.
Madison continued.
“I was there two years ago.”
Two years.
My stomach tightened.
“You were working check-in.”
She smiled sadly.
“Daniel introduced us.”
A memory flashed through my mind.
A young woman with dark blond hair.
A blue dress.
Daniel saying she worked with one of his clients.
I had shaken her hand.
I had thanked her for volunteering.
I had no idea she was already sleeping with my husband.
“How long?” I whispered.
Daniel didn’t answer.
Madison did.
“Almost three years.”
Three years.
I stared at Daniel.
We had been married six.
Half our marriage.
Half.
I felt Lauren’s hand on my back.
“Emily.”
I lifted one finger.
I needed everyone to stop talking.
Three years.
I thought about every business trip.
Every late meeting.
Every shower the second he walked through the door.
Every time his phone lit up and he turned it over.
Every argument where he accused me of being suspicious.
Every time I apologized.
I had apologized to the man betraying me because he convinced me that noticing his betrayal made me unreasonable.
I looked at Madison.
“Did you know we were doing fertility treatments?”
Her confidence disappeared.
“What?”
Daniel said, “Don’t.”
I ignored him.
“For almost eighteen months, I was injecting hormones into my body.”
Madison stared at Daniel.
“I didn’t know that.”
“I had two procedures.”
Her eyes moved from me to him.
“I didn’t know.”
“He drove me to them.”
Daniel looked at the floor.
“He held my hand.”
Madison whispered, “Daniel?”
I kept going.
“He told me he wanted a family with me.”
Madison’s face changed.
For the first time that evening, she looked less like my enemy and more like another person who had just discovered she had been lied to.
Daniel saw it happening.
“Emily is twisting things.”
I laughed.
“What part?”
“We had discussed slowing down.”
“No. You discussed slowing down after the second failed procedure.”
“Exactly.”
“Three weeks later you asked me to try again.”
Madison backed away from him.
“You said you stopped trying years ago.”
Daniel looked at her.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Yes, it is.”
Suddenly, their perfect little partnership cracked right in front of me.
And for the first time that night, Daniel didn’t know which woman to control first.
His wife?
Or his mistress?
Richard spoke quietly.
“This is what he does.”
Daniel turned toward his father.
“Shut up.”
Richard didn’t.
“He tells each person what they need to hear until he gets what he wants.”
Patricia wiped her face.
“That’s enough, Richard.”
“No, it isn’t.”
He looked at her.
“You’ve covered for him his entire life.”
She stared at him.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means.”
The tension shifted.
This suddenly wasn’t only about my marriage.
Something older was buried in this family.
Matthew, who had been silent near the window, finally spoke.
“Tell her about Boston.”
Daniel’s face drained of color.
Patricia snapped.
“Matthew.”
I looked between them.
“What happened in Boston?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Nothing that matters.”
Matthew walked back toward the table.
“It matters if Emily’s lawyer starts looking at company records.”
Daniel’s voice dropped.
“Don’t.”
Matthew ignored him.
“Four years ago, before Daniel started his consulting firm, he worked for Dad.”
I knew that.
Everyone knew that.
Richard owned a commercial real estate company.
Daniel had worked there for three years.
Then suddenly left to start his own business.
He always said he wanted independence.
Matthew continued.
“There was a property deal in Boston.”
Richard stared at his son.
“Matthew.”
But Matthew looked exhausted.
Like he had carried this secret long enough.
“Money disappeared.”
I felt cold.
“How much?”
“Two hundred thousand.”
Daniel exploded.
“It didn’t disappear!”
Matthew shouted back.
“You moved it!”
“I moved it temporarily!”
I almost laughed.
There it was again.
Temporary theft.
Apparently Daniel believed stealing only became wrong if you didn’t plan on returning the money someday.
Richard said, “I covered the loss.”
I turned toward him.
“You covered for Daniel?”
His silence was answer enough.
“You knew he had done this before?”
Richard’s shoulders dropped.
“I thought he learned from it.”
“And instead you invested four million dollars in his next company?”
“I thought keeping him close would help.”
Daniel scoffed.
“You thought controlling me would help.”
Richard slammed his fist against the table.
“I saved you from criminal charges!”
The room went silent.
Even Madison stared at Daniel differently now.
I looked at Richard.
“What exactly did Daniel do?”
“He moved client escrow funds to cover a personal investment that had gone bad.”
My heart hammered.
“And you paid the money back?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone report it?”
“No.”
Daniel pointed at him.
“Because there was nothing to report.”
Richard stared at him.
“You forged an authorization.”
The word landed harder this time.
Forged.
Again.
I looked down at the signature on the home equity loan.
This wasn’t desperation.
It wasn’t one bad choice.
It was a pattern.
I looked at Lauren.
“Did you reach David?”
She nodded.
“He’s calling you in five minutes.”
“Tell him I’m coming to his office.”
Daniel stepped in front of me.
“No.”
I almost smiled.
“No?”
“You’re not running to a lawyer in the middle of this.”
“Move.”
“We can go home and talk.”
“There is no home.”
“Emily.”
“That house is mine.”
His face changed.
I continued.
“And after what I just learned, you will not step inside it tonight.”
“You can’t lock me out of my own house.”
I held up the loan papers.
“You seem comfortable pretending things belong to you.”
His jaw tightened.
“Don’t do this.”
“Move.”
He didn’t.
Lauren reached into her purse.
“I’ll call the police if you keep blocking her.”
Daniel looked around the room.
He realized everyone was watching.
Including restaurant staff standing nervously near the doorway.
Finally he stepped aside.
I walked toward the door.
Then Madison called my name.
I stopped.
She was standing behind Daniel.
The wine had dried across the front of her dress.
Her mascara was smudged.
She looked furious and frightened.
“I need to ask you something.”
I turned.
“What?”
She looked at Daniel.
Then back at me.
“Do you own a cabin in Lake Geneva?”
My entire body went cold.
“Yes.”
Daniel whispered, “Madison.”
Her eyes widened.
“He told me it belonged to him.”
I stared at my husband.
The cabin had been my father’s.
It was the last place I remembered being happy with him before cancer took him.
I had never considered selling it.
Not once.
Madison reached into her purse.
She pulled out her phone.
“I think you need to see this.”
Daniel moved toward her.
She stepped back.
“Don’t touch me.”
Then she turned the screen toward me.
There was an email.
A real estate listing agreement.
The address was my cabin.
At the bottom was a scheduled closing date.
May you like
Five days from now.
And next to the seller’s name was a signature that looked exactly like mine.
