Gavin stepped out onto the back patio before asking Ethan to continue.
Behind the glass doors, Brenda remained in the kitchen. She pretended not to watch him, but he could feel her attention through the glass.
“What does Nora have to do with the deal?” Gavin repeated.
Ethan took a moment before answering.
“Not directly.”
“That isn’t what you just implied.”
“I said you don’t understand what happened.”
“Then explain it.”
“I will. But I’m not doing this so you can drag Nora back into whatever crisis of conscience you’re having.”
Gavin’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t know anything about my conscience.”
“No. I know about your paperwork.”
That stopped him.
Ethan continued.
“When you approached my firm, the project looked good at first.”
Gavin remembered.
It had been a mixed-use development outside the city. Retail on the ground level. Offices and apartments above. If it had succeeded, it would have changed the trajectory of his career.
“It was good.”
“It was overleveraged.”
“It could have been refinanced.”
“With outside capital.”
“Yes.”
“Without fully disclosing how much personal debt was supporting the early stages.”
Gavin’s grip tightened on the phone.
“We disclosed what was required.”
“You disclosed enough to avoid lying directly.”
“That’s not the same thing as hiding.”
“It is when you’re asking other people to take risk based on an incomplete picture.”
Gavin turned away from the house.
“You rejected the deal. Fine. Why are we talking about this now?”
“Because a few months after I rejected it, I saw financial documents connected to you again.”
Gavin froze.
“How?”
Ethan’s voice remained even.
“I was advising another group that considered coming in.”
“You never told me that.”
“I wasn’t obligated to.”
“What documents?”
“Transfers. Personal guarantees. Related accounts.”
Gavin felt a slow pressure building behind his eyes.
“And Nora?”
“She wasn’t involved.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep trying to make her part of your explanation.”
Gavin said nothing.
Ethan continued.
“One account caught my attention because of the property attached to it.”
“The house.”
“Yes.”
Gavin leaned against the patio railing.
“You knew the money came from there.”
“I knew money had moved from an account associated with the property.”
“Did you know the house belonged to Nora?”
“Not then.”
“When did you find out?”
“Years later.”
Gavin closed his eyes.
Of course.
Ethan had said at the wedding that when they first met, he had not known Gavin was Nora’s husband.
“How much did you see?”
“Enough to know that eighty-four thousand had been moved.”
The number no longer shocked him.
What shocked him was how many people had apparently known it.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because there was nothing illegal about what I saw on its face. There were just questions.”
“Questions.”
“Yes.”
“Nora loved questions.”
The bitterness escaped before he could stop it.
Silence followed.
When Ethan spoke again, his tone had changed.
“That sentence explains more than you think.”
Gavin looked toward the yard.
“I didn’t call you for a lecture.”
“I didn’t call to give one.”
“Then why did you call?”
“Because after last night, I remembered something I should have understood earlier.”
Gavin waited.
“When Nora and I became friends after your divorce, she once described a financial betrayal without giving me details.”
His pulse jumped.
“What did she say?”
“I’m not repeating private conversations.”
“You brought it up.”
“To explain this: I knew enough to realize later that it involved the house account.”
“When?”
“Years afterward.”
“And you never told her you had seen those records?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because by then it no longer mattered.”
“It mattered to her.”
“It mattered to who she had been.”
Gavin frowned.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means she had built a life in which she no longer needed every old question answered.”
Gavin hated the sentence immediately.
Maybe because it sounded true.
“Did she know you’d dealt with me?”
“Eventually.”
“How?”
“I told her.”
“At the beginning of your relationship?”
“No.”
“So you kept things from her too.”
Ethan exhaled slowly.
“If you’re trying to make me your equivalent, save your energy.”
“I’m pointing out that everyone keeps deciding what Nora needs to know.”
“No. I told her when it became relevant.”
“When was that?”
“When I realized she was considering trusting me with Lily.”
That answer caught Gavin unexpectedly.
He pictured Ethan sitting across from Nora and telling her about their old business connection before becoming part of Lily’s life.
“You told her then.”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked questions.”
Gavin almost laughed.
“Of course she did.”
“And I answered them.”
The contrast was obvious.
Ethan did not underline it.
He didn’t need to.
Gavin stared into the yard.
“What happened to the project?”
“You know what happened.”
“It collapsed.”
“After more money went into it.”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
Gavin’s shoulders tensed.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Fine.”
“Why are you asking?”
“Because you’re still treating the eighty-four thousand like the central issue.”
“It was the money Nora knew about.”
“It was the first money.”
Gavin went still.
For several seconds he heard nothing but distant traffic.
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“No.”
“Then ask Brenda.”
Gavin turned toward the glass door.
She was no longer in the kitchen.
“What does Brenda know?”
“I’m not having that conversation for her.”
“Ethan.”
“Ask her about the second loan.”
The call ended.
Gavin stood outside for several seconds with the phone still against his ear.
Second loan.
He knew immediately what Ethan meant.
That was the problem.
It had not been eighty-four thousand.
Not really.
The original transfer had been eighty-four thousand.
After that had come another infusion of cash—money arranged through a short-term loan against an account Brenda controlled.
At least, that was how Gavin remembered it.
He walked inside.
Brenda was upstairs.
He found her in the bedroom pulling clothes from the closet and laying them on the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“My sister’s.”
“What?”
“I’m not spending the weekend being interrogated about things that happened before we were married.”
He stood in the doorway.
“Ethan told me to ask about the second loan.”
Brenda stopped.
The silence answered him.
“What did he mean?”
“You already know.”
“No. I know what you told me.”
She turned slowly.
“What I told you?”
“Yes.”
Her face hardened.
“Be careful, Gavin.”
“Where did that money actually come from?”
“It was mine.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t lie.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Interesting choice of words.”
He ignored it.
“Was it yours?”
“Most of it.”
“How much wasn’t?”
Brenda looked away.
Gavin stepped farther into the room.
“Brenda.”
“Twenty thousand.”
“From where?”
She said nothing.
“From where?”
“A family account.”
“Whose family?”
“Mine.”
“You told me your sister helped.”
“She did.”
“How?”
“She didn’t know.”
Gavin stared at her.
Brenda sat on the edge of the bed.
“It was replaced.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I moved twenty thousand from an account my sister and I shared after our father died.”
“Without telling her?”
“Yes.”
He almost laughed.
The hypocrisy of his shock was obvious even to him.
Brenda saw it too.
“Don’t stand there acting righteous.”
“I’m not.”
“You moved Nora’s money.”
“I know.”
“You lied to her.”
“I know.”
“So what exactly are you angry about?”
He looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
That answer seemed to surprise both of them.
Brenda rubbed her forehead.
“The project was supposed to work.”
“I know.”
“You believed in it.”
“I did.”
“So did I.”
He nodded.
That had been part of what bound them together.
During the affair, Brenda had believed in him at precisely the moment Nora had started questioning him.
At the time, the contrast had seemed meaningful.
Nora worried.
Brenda believed.
Nora asked where the numbers came from.
Brenda said they would figure it out.
Nora wanted transparency.
Brenda called him brilliant.
He had mistaken agreement for loyalty.
Maybe Brenda had mistaken secrecy for intimacy.
“How much did you lose?” Gavin asked.
She looked at him.
“In total?”
“Yes.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m realizing I never asked.”
Her expression shifted.
Almost imperceptibly.
“About forty-six thousand.”
He stared.
“You told me thirty.”
“I didn’t want you to feel worse.”
Gavin sat on the chair near the window.
“So we both lied to protect each other.”
Brenda gave a bitter laugh.
“Is that what you’re calling it?”
“I don’t know what I’m calling anything anymore.”
She stood.
“You saw Nora for one night.”
“This isn’t about seeing Nora.”
“Then why did none of this bother you last week?”
He looked up.
“I didn’t know she knew.”
Brenda shook her head.
“There. Again.”
“What?”
“You care because she knows.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You don’t care what we did. You care that the version where you got away with it isn’t true.”
He stared at her.
The words were cruel.
They were also close enough to truth that he couldn’t dismiss them.
Brenda resumed packing.
Gavin sat motionless.
After a while, he asked, “Did you know about the letter?”
Her hands stopped.
“No.”
He watched her.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He believed her.
That somehow made everything worse.
“So Nora knew about the money. My mother knew about the letter. Ethan knew about the records. You knew Nora may have seen our messages.”
Brenda zipped her bag.
“And?”
“And I knew almost nothing.”
“You knew what you wanted to know.”
He looked at her.
She lifted the bag.
“I’m going to my sister’s.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Brenda.”
She stopped at the door.
“What?”
He wanted to tell her not to go.
Instead he asked, “Were you happy?”
Her expression softened unexpectedly.
“With you?”
“Yes.”
“For a long time.”
The past tense hurt.
“And now?”
She considered the question.
“Now I’m tired of being the person you chose and still feeling like I’m competing with the person you left.”
The bedroom door closed behind her.
Across town, I was helping Lily build a cardboard castle on the living room floor.
She had decided every tower needed a different purpose.
One was for sleeping.
One was for snacks.
One was for “important meetings,” though she refused to say what happened during them.
Ethan was kneeling beside us with scissors.
“You realize we are constructing a deeply inefficient government building.”
Lily looked offended.
“It’s a castle.”
“Exactly.”
“Castles don’t have government.”
I glanced at Ethan.
“Don’t ruin monarchy for her before dinner.”
He smiled.
The doorbell rang.
I stood.
“Expecting someone?”
“No.”
I checked through the front window before opening the door.
A woman stood on the porch.
Late sixties. Neatly dressed. Familiar.
My stomach tightened.
Ethan saw my expression and rose.
“Who is it?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
I opened the door.
Gavin’s mother stood there holding a small brown box.
“Nora.”
“Margaret.”
She gave me a nervous smile.
“I hope I’m not intruding.”
I looked at the box.
“What happened?”
“Nothing bad.”
Behind me, Lily asked Ethan who had arrived.
Margaret heard the child’s voice.
Something flickered across her face.
“I wanted to return something that belongs to you.”
She held out the box.
I didn’t take it.
“What is it?”
“Things I should have given you years ago.”
The cardboard castle suddenly felt very far away.
Margaret looked at me carefully.
“And there’s something you need to know.”
My chest tightened.
“About Gavin?”
She nodded.
“He read your letter.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: Gavin’s Mother Came Carrying Old Photographs, but One Forgotten Item Revealed Why Nora Had Really Needed a Clean Escape
Five Years After He Walked Away, One Wedding Put Me Face-to-Face With the Man Who Thought I Had Never Recovered
Part 6 of 35
