Chapter 2: What He Chose
“Undo what?” I asked.
Adrian breathed into the phone. Behind him, something scraped across a hard floor.
“Whatever Marcus thinks happened.”
“You said he made you marry Serena. What happened?”
“I told you, he brought papers.”
“Did you sign them?”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that I looked down at the invoice beneath my hand.
“Then what do you need me to undo?”
“Claire, please. I can’t do this while you cross-examine me.”
A half hour earlier, I had watched him kiss Serena under the hotel chandelier. I knew what I had seen. I did not know what Marcus had done after arriving, or why Adrian was asking me to repair something he could not describe.
“I’m asking what you signed.”
His voice dropped.
“There was a statement.”
“A statement saying what?”
“It wasn’t formal. Serena wrote something down, and Marcus wanted me to acknowledge it. Everyone was upset.”
“So you did sign something.”
“I said I didn’t sign his papers.”
I pressed my thumb against the edge of the desk. The invoice listed a due date and an amount for “strategic communications and community engagement.” On the copy I had, there was no description of the work. That did not mean no work existed. It meant I needed to see more.
Adrian had moved from no signature to one he wanted to call informal in less than a minute.
“Send me a photograph of the statement,” I said.
“I don’t have it.”
“Who does?”
“I think Serena.”
“Then ask her.”
A door opened on his end of the call. I heard his muffled voice, too far from the phone to make out the words. When he came back, his breathing had changed.
“She’s not in a position to talk to you.”
“Is she hurt?”
“No. She’s upset.”
I was upset, too. I had still managed to answer his questions.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At the hotel.”
“That wasn’t what I meant. Is Marcus there?”
“No.”
“Was anyone else there when this happened?”
“Claire, I don’t know what answer you want.”
“The one that’s true.”
For a moment, I thought he had hung up. Then I heard him clear his throat.
“Marcus came to the room. He put divorce papers in front of Serena and said he was done. He kept pushing us to say what we wanted. I said what I had to say to get him to leave.”
“What did you say?”
“You know how he gets.”
I did not. Marcus and I had shared dinners, holidays, and long stretches of polite small talk while Serena and Adrian filled the room. I knew he listened more than he spoke. Tonight, I had heard something harder in his voice. Neither observation told me what he had done upstairs.
“I’m going to speak to him,” I said.
“No. That’s why I called you first.”
I looked at the clock. He had called twenty-nine minutes after my first photograph. In that time, he claimed to have been confronted, cornered into a marriage, and somehow left without the paper he wanted me to undo.
“What are you asking me to do, Adrian?”
“Tell him I didn’t mean it.”
I had been waiting for a clear request. Hearing it did not help.
“I wasn’t there,” I said. “I can’t tell Marcus what you meant.”
“You’re my wife.”
“And you told me you were going to Chicago.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that.”
About that. As though the trip had been canceled and he had forgotten to call.
“I’m not coming to the hotel,” I said. “Send me the statement if you get it. Don’t come home tonight.”
“Claire—”
“I need some space.”
I ended the call before he could turn my need into another problem for me to solve.
For a few minutes, I sat without touching anything. Rain ticked against the study window. Our wedding photograph remained on the shelf, both of us laughing with our shoes in our hands. I remembered how sore my feet had been, and how Adrian had carried me the last block to our apartment because I had refused to put the shoes back on.
That memory belonged to me. I did not have to throw it away to believe what I had seen tonight.
My phone lit up.
Marcus: I can tell you what happened. Call when you’re ready.
He had promised not to speak for me. I hoped he meant it.
When I called, he answered before the second ring.
“Is Serena all right?” I asked.
“She’s safe. She stayed at the hotel after I left.”
“And Adrian?”
“He was there when I left, too.”
I wrote down the time of the call on the pad beside the invoice. Marcus noticed the pause but said nothing.
“Adrian told me you brought divorce papers,” I said.
“I did. They were for my divorce from Serena. My attorney prepared them. I brought copies because I intended to tell her I was filing.”
“You brought them to the room?”
“Yes.”
“Did she sign anything?”
“Not in front of me.”
“What about Adrian?”
“He didn’t sign my papers.”
I wrote that down as carefully as I had written Adrian’s account. Marcus’s description was more specific. It was still his account.
“Did you bring a marriage license?” I asked.
“No.”
“An officiant?”
“Claire, no. I brought papers about my marriage. I can send you the first page if you want to see whose names are on them.”
“Yes. Please do.”
The offer mattered more than his certainty. A page I could examine would answer one question, even if it could not tell me everything that had happened in the room.
“What did Adrian say while you were there?” I asked.
Marcus went quiet.
“I asked how long it had been going on,” he said. “Serena asked me to lower my voice. Adrian tried to take the blame for none of it.”
“That sounds like Adrian.”
“I shouldn’t have gone up there alone.”
It was the first thing he had said that night without sounding prepared.
“Why did you?” I asked.
“I thought if I saw them together, Serena would finally answer me honestly.”
“And did she?”
“No.”
He exhaled.
“I’ve suspected the affair. I’ve suspected something was wrong with the charity’s payments, too. Seeing them together doesn’t prove the second thing. I know that.”
I had been afraid he would forget. Worse, I had been afraid grief would make me forget.
“What made you suspicious of the payments?” I asked.
“Large bills for work no one could explain to me. I’m a donor observer, not a voting director. Serena said I was overstepping.”
“Did you ask to see the supporting work?”
“I asked. I didn’t get it.”
That could mean several things. A charity director might have had a good reason not to share records with her husband, even a donor observer. It did not settle whether the bills were legitimate.
“Claire,” he said, “you told me you had the company accounts. I need to see them before Adrian realizes how much you know.”
I looked at the invoice on my desk. Marcus had come to the hotel with his own papers, his own suspicions, and an idea of what he wanted from me. We might want some of the same answers. That did not make him the person to hold my files.
“I’m not sending you anything tonight.”
“He could change the records.”
“Then what I have needs to be handled carefully. I need advice from someone who represents me.”
“I’m not asking you to trust me over a lawyer.”
“You’re asking me for records.”
He let the distinction stand.
“I’ll send the page from the divorce papers,” he said. “You don’t owe me your files.”
I thanked him and ended the call.
A photograph arrived a minute later. At the top of the page were Marcus’s and Serena’s names. Adrian’s name was nowhere on it. I saved the image with the rest of tonight’s material, then set the phone face down.
There was someone I could call in the morning. Rachel Lin had once advised a former colleague of mine through a business separation. I had her number, and, more importantly, she had no connection to Adrian’s firm or Serena’s charity. I drafted a message asking whether she could speak with me privately. I did not attach the photographs or the invoice.
Then I turned back to the accounts.
The copies were in a folder on my computer. I had kept them separate from the family documents Adrian and I both used. I opened the invoice I had examined before his call, then the transaction list filed with it.
A payment appeared against that invoice. The description matched. So did the amount.
I opened the next invoice. Same general category of work, a different billing period. Another large amount. Then a third. By the time I reached the sixth, I had stopped thinking about Adrian’s call.
Six invoices from his firm to Serena’s charity. Six amounts large enough that somebody should have asked what the charity received. The descriptions on my copies were broad. I could not tell whether supporting reports were stored elsewhere, and I would not decide the answer from a folder on my desk.
I went back to the first payment and enlarged the transaction record. There were fields for the date, the payee, and the person who had approved it. I had overlooked the last field when I first opened the file.
May you like
Now I could read it.
Beside the first disputed payment were my initials.
