Rebecca told me not to investigate E.M. myself.
I agreed.
Then I spent the entire night trying to determine who E.M. was.
At seventy-one, disobedience becomes easier because fewer people possess the authority to stop you.
Still, I did not search recklessly.
I started with what I knew.
The payments began twenty-nine years earlier.
Harold had been forty-one.
Daniel had been fifteen.
Our marriage, as I remembered it, had been stable.
Not cinematic.
Not perfect.
But stable.
I searched old calendars.
Harold had traveled frequently then for work.
Phoenix.
Las Vegas.
San Diego.
Albuquerque.
Nothing unusual.
By midnight, I was furious with myself.
Three initials and a list of payments were enough to turn decades of memories into suspects.
A late dinner became suspicious.
A business trip became suspicious.
A phone call taken in another room became suspicious.
Money creates distortions.
So does uncertainty.
I closed the laptop.
The next morning Rebecca arrived with a private investigator named Thomas Vale.
I disliked that immediately.
“Absolutely not.”
Thomas looked unsurprised.
Rebecca crossed her arms.
“You said you wanted answers.”
“I did not say I wanted a man named Thomas investigating my dead husband.”
“My name is not the concerning part.”
“That remains to be seen.”
He was perhaps sixty, gray-haired, with the patient expression of someone accustomed to being disliked professionally.
Rebecca placed a copy of the ledger on my table.
“Thomas has already identified several possibilities.”
I glared at her.
“You started without asking me?”
“I started checking public records because a reporter already has part of this information.”
That silenced me.
Thomas opened a notebook.
“The payments marked E.M. were deposited through several accounts, but most eventually connect to one woman.”
My mouth went dry.
“Name.”
“Elena Morales.”
Nothing.
No recognition.
“Who is she?”
“Born in New Mexico. Lived in Arizona for more than thirty years. Worked as a nurse.”
I waited.
“Did Harold know her?”
“Almost certainly.”
The room seemed smaller.
“How?”
“We don't know yet.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
That answer frightened me more than if he had said no.
“Where?”
“Phoenix.”
One hour away.
Rebecca watched me carefully.
“Margaret, before you decide anything, remember that payments do not prove an affair.”
I hadn't used the word.
Hearing it aloud made my stomach turn.
“I know.”
Thomas continued.
“Elena Morales received regular payments beginning in 1997. The amounts increased over time. There are gaps, but the pattern is consistent.”
“Did she work for him?”
“No evidence.”
“Family?”
“Not that we’ve found.”
I stared at the ledger.
“What does the reporter know?”
“Likely less than we do,” Rebecca said. “But they know Elena’s name.”
That changed everything.
“Then she'll be contacted.”
“Probably.”
“Before us?”
“Possibly already.”
I stood.
“We need to call her.”
Rebecca hesitated.
Thomas did not.
“I agree.”
She looked at him.
“You do?”
“If the press reaches her first, she may say something publicly before understanding the context.”
Rebecca sighed.
“Fine. But I want the call recorded with consent.”
I stared at both of them.
“This is my marriage, not a deposition.”
“No recording,” Thomas said.
Rebecca looked annoyed but yielded.
Thomas found a number.
I called from Rebecca’s phone so Elena would not have mine.
A woman answered after four rings.
“Hello?”
Her voice was older than mine.
Soft.
“Is this Elena Morales?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Margaret Briggs.”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
I gripped the phone.
“You know who I am.”
Another silence.
Then she said, “I wondered when you would call.”
The room tilted.
Rebecca reached toward me.
I lifted one hand.
“How did you know?”
“Because a reporter called yesterday.”
I closed my eyes.
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because Harold asked me never to.”
The name in her voice was familiar.
Too familiar.
I stood and walked toward the window.
“How did you know my husband?”
Elena breathed in slowly.
“We should not do this by telephone.”
Every instinct I had screamed yes and no simultaneously.
“Then how?”
“I can come to you.”
“No.”
The refusal came too fast.
Elena understood.
“All right.”
“I’ll come to you.”
Rebecca shook her head vigorously.
I ignored her.
Elena gave me an address.
Thomas wrote it down.
“Tomorrow morning?” Elena asked.
“Yes.”
Before hanging up, I said, “One question.”
“All right.”
“Was Harold having an affair with you?”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
Thomas looked toward the ceiling.
I did not care.
Elena answered immediately.
“No.”
Relief came too quickly.
Then she added, “But he did keep me secret from you.”
That was worse in a different way.
The following morning, Thomas drove me to Phoenix.
Rebecca objected until I agreed he could wait nearby.
Elena lived in a small adobe house on a quiet street lined with palo verde trees.
She opened the door before I knocked.
I recognized nothing about her.
She was perhaps seventy-five. Silver hair cut short. Dark eyes. Thin wrists. She wore a blue cardigan despite the heat.
For several seconds we simply looked at each other.
Then she said, “You have Harold’s eyes when you're angry.”
I felt heat rise through me.
“He had blue eyes.”
“I didn't mean the color.”
She stepped aside.
I almost left.
Instead I entered.
Her house smelled faintly of cinnamon and furniture polish.
Photographs covered one wall.
Children.
Grandchildren.
A man I assumed had been her husband.
No Harold.
That mattered.
Elena led me to a small sitting room.
“Coffee?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
“No.”
She sat.
I remained standing.
“You received hundreds of thousands of dollars from my husband.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She looked toward a framed photograph on the mantel.
“Because he believed he owed me.”
“For what?”
Elena’s fingers tightened in her lap.
“Your husband saved my son’s life.”
I sat.
The sentence made no sense.
“When?”
“1996.”
I waited.
“My son Mateo was seventeen.”
Elena looked toward the photograph again.
“He was driving with friends. They had been drinking.”
A car accident.
The story emerged slowly.
Mateo had been the passenger in a vehicle that struck a pedestrian late at night.
The driver fled.
Mateo remained.
He called for help.
The pedestrian was Harold.
I stared.
“No.”
Elena nodded.
“No. Harold was never hit by a car.”
“Yes, he was.”
“I would know.”
“He didn't tell you.”
I stood.
“He was hospitalized once in 1996 for appendicitis.”
Elena looked at me with unbearable gentleness.
“That wasn't why.”
The room became too quiet.
I remembered that hospital stay.
Harold had called from Phoenix.
Emergency surgery, he said.
I had driven up the following morning.
He had bruising near his ribs.
He claimed complications.
I had believed him.
“Why would he lie?”
“Because the boy who hit him was the son of one of his employees.”
“Mateo?”
“No. The driver.”
I sat again.
Elena explained.
Harold had left a late business dinner and crossed the road near his hotel. A car struck him.
The driver, a nineteen-year-old named Luis Ortega, panicked.
Mateo stayed.
Police arrived.
Luis was eventually identified.
He faced serious charges.
Harold could have pursued everything aggressively.
Instead, after learning that Luis’s family depended on him financially and that nobody had intended harm, Harold supported a plea arrangement.
“He nearly died,” Elena said.
I felt sick.
“How badly was he hurt?”
“Broken ribs. Shoulder. Internal bleeding.”
I remembered the scar beneath Harold’s left side.
Gallbladder surgery, he had told me.
The lie had lived beside me for thirty years.
“Why did you receive money?”
“Not because of the accident.”
She inhaled.
“Afterward, Harold learned Mateo wanted to study nursing but I couldn't afford school.”
“He paid for it.”
“Yes.”
“That does not explain sixteen years.”
“No.”
My anger returned.
Elena looked at me steadily.
“Mateo developed leukemia at twenty-six.”
I closed my eyes.
“He survived?”
“For a while.”
I looked toward the family photographs.
“Which one is he?”
She pointed.
A smiling man in blue hospital scrubs stood with his arm around Elena.
“He died eleven years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
The payments continued after his death.
“Why?”
“My husband had already died. Mateo had two children.”
Harold supported them.
School expenses.
Medical care.
Later, college accounts.
“Why secretly?”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“Because he was ashamed.”
“Of helping?”
“Of lying to you the first time.”
I stared.
“He told himself that because he had hidden the accident, every later explanation would require admitting the original lie.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
It sounded like Harold.
Elena smiled sadly.
“He knew.”
“Why didn't he tell me before he died?”
“He tried.”
“When?”
“Several times.”
“No.”
“He said he couldn't find the right moment.”
“There was no right moment because he waited thirty years.”
“I told him that.”
I looked at her.
“You argued with him?”
“Often.”
That familiarity hurt.
Not romantic familiarity.
Something else.
A friendship I had never known existed.
“How close were you?”
“Close enough that he trusted me.”
“And I knew nothing.”
“I asked him to tell you.”
“He refused?”
“He postponed.”
I hated the word.
Elena stood and went to a cabinet.
She returned with a sealed envelope.
My name was written on it.
Harold’s handwriting.
I stopped breathing.
“He gave me this six months before he died.”
“Why didn't you send it?”
“He made me promise to wait.”
“For what?”
“Until Desert Oak was settled.”
I stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
She placed the envelope on the table.
“He said you would understand when the time came.”
I laughed bitterly.
“That sounds exactly like a dead man who does not have to explain himself.”
Elena almost smiled.
I picked up the envelope.
“Did the reporter know about this?”
“No.”
“Does anyone?”
“My daughter knows Harold helped our family. She does not know about the letter.”
I slid my finger beneath the seal.
Then stopped.
Thirty-eight years of marriage had already shifted once that morning.
Whatever Harold wrote might shift it again.
Elena watched me.
“You don't have to read it here.”
“I know.”
I put the envelope in my handbag.
At the door, Elena said, “Margaret.”
I turned.
“He loved you.”
My anger flared.
“Please don't tell me what my husband felt.”
She accepted that.
“You're right.”
I stepped outside.
Then she said quietly, “He spoke about you every time he visited.”
I stopped.
“How often did he visit?”
“Not often. Once or twice a year.”
That was more than enough to hurt.
I walked toward Thomas’s car.
He opened the passenger door.
“Well?”
“Drive.”
He did.
We reached the end of the block before he asked, “Do you need anything?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“For nobody to ask me what I'm feeling for at least ten minutes.”
He nodded.
Nine minutes later, I opened Harold’s envelope.
Inside were four handwritten pages.
The first sentence was worse than anything Elena had told me.
Margaret, there is one more reason I kept Desert Oak alive, and it concerns Daniel.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Harold’s Final Letter Connected Daniel to the Secret Payments, and I Learned My Son Had Been Protected From a Truth He Never Knew
After Two Years Inside My Son’s Home, One Quiet Dinner Question Revealed Exactly What I Had Become to Them
Part 10 of 47
