Chapter 4: The Woman at the Window
The woman at the window smiled when Michael sat down. Not the polite smile people gave a late arrival, but the small, private one of someone who knew what he would say before he said it.
I recognized her from a company picnic and a holiday party. Tessa. She managed the finances for Michael’s development business, the woman he’d once described as “the only person who can make the numbers behave.”
He leaned across the table. Tessa touched his wrist, and he turned his hand beneath hers, covering her fingers with his.
I felt Jo go still beside me.
“That’s her,” I whispered.
“You know her?”
“From Michael’s company. Tessa.”
At the café window, she lifted her hand from his and slid a thin packet across the table. Michael glanced down at it, then scanned the street. His eyes passed over the row of parked cars without stopping at ours.
He tucked the packet inside his briefcase.
The gesture was quick. Practiced.
My throat tightened. I wanted to storm inside and ask them what they thought they were doing. Instead, I sat beside Jo with my hands clasped in my lap, watching my husband turn toward another woman as if the rest of his life had already been settled.
Jo waited until Michael and Tessa stood. They left separately, Tessa first. Michael lingered at the counter before heading out the side door.
When he was gone, Jo started the car.
“What now?” I asked.
“We find out what the account notice can tell us. Then we decide what you can safely ask him.”
“I’ve already asked him to show me a document. He told me to trust him.”
Jo glanced at me. “And you didn’t.”
“No.”
Back at the house, Daniel sat at the kitchen table with a box of crayons and a half-finished drawing. I tried to smile at him, but my face felt stiff. He looked from me to Jo, reading the worry we hadn’t managed to hide.
“Are you staying?” he asked.
“For a little while,” I said. “Jo and I need to talk.”
He nodded and bent over his drawing. I could see a yellow sun in the corner, the same one he put in almost every picture, even when the scene was indoors.
Jo stepped into the hall to make a call. I stayed by the kitchen doorway, keeping Daniel in sight while she spoke quietly with the account custodian. She didn’t ask me to explain the request again. She asked about the activity notice—and then listened, one hand pressed to her ear.
When she came back, the color had drained from her face.
“What?” I asked.
“The recent account-change request came from a device connected through this house’s internet.”
For a second, the kitchen seemed to tilt. The refrigerator hummed. Daniel’s crayon scraped across the paper.
“Could it be a mistake?”
“The custodian checked the connection details against the earlier security alert.” Jo lowered her voice. “It came from here, Mara.”
Michael’s office. The family computer. His phone. Any room in the house could have been the place where he sat and tried to reach something he had promised never to touch.
Jo put a hand on my arm. “Don’t confront him alone if you can avoid it.”
The front door opened before I could answer.
Michael came in carrying his briefcase. He stopped when he saw Jo, then looked at me. His gaze flicked to the kitchen table, to Daniel’s drawing, and back to my face.
“What are you doing home?”
The question landed harder than a shout.
“I had something to take care of.”
“Your flight—”
“Michael,” Jo said, coolly, “I should go.”
He gave her a tight smile. “Of course.”
Jo squeezed my hand before she left. The door clicked shut behind her, and the silence she left behind seemed to press in from every room.
Michael set his briefcase on the counter. I watched his fingers stay on the handle.
“Where’s the blue folder?” I asked.
His expression barely changed, but I saw the pause. “What folder?”
“The one from my desk. The inheritance papers.”
He gave a small, tired laugh, as if I had accused him of something absurd. “Mara, you’ve been through the desk. Maybe you put it somewhere else.”
“I didn’t.”
“You’re upset, and now every missing thing has to mean something.”
“I’m asking where it is.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t know.” He glanced toward Daniel. “You’ve been acting suspicious of everyone since this started.”
The word stung because I could hear him shaping it for our son.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Make me sound unreasonable because I asked you a question.”
Michael turned toward Daniel, his voice softening by a notch. “Hey, bud. Why don’t you take your crayons upstairs and finish your picture?”
Daniel’s eyes stayed on mine. “I’m almost done.”
“You can bring it up with you.”
“He’s fine here,” I said.
Michael’s smile vanished. “This isn’t a conversation for him.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. But he was the one who had brought his judgment into the kitchen and made our son feel it.
Daniel pushed back from the table, clutching his drawing. As he passed me, I touched his shoulder. He leaned into my hand for half a second, then went upstairs.
Michael watched until Daniel disappeared from view.
“What did Jo tell you?” he asked.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because you’ve been whispering about me all morning.”
His eyes went to the window, then to the briefcase. I understood, suddenly, that his calm wasn’t calm at all. It was a lid pressed down with both hands.
“The account activity came from this house,” I said.
Michael’s face tightened.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know where it came from.”
“You and Jo have turned a routine security notice into some kind of conspiracy.”
“I didn’t make the request.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know what I signed and what I didn’t.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he gave a humorless breath and glanced toward the entryway, where the suitcase I’d packed still stood beside the wall.
“You want to know what I think?” he said. “I think you’ve been waiting for a reason to suspect me.”
My anger sharpened. “And I think you’re more worried about my questions than you are about answering them.”
For the first time, his gaze dropped from my face. He looked at the suitcase again. When he looked back, something in his expression had changed: the irritation had thinned, revealing a colder certainty beneath it.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said.
The house seemed to go quiet around us. Upstairs, a drawer slid open and shut.
May you like
Michael stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“I know you never boarded your flight.”
