Chapter 9
Ethan came in just after eight. I heard the key in the lock and didn't move from the kitchen island.
He was still in the white shirt and dark trousers, the collar open now, his hair no longer as slick as it had been that afternoon. He carried nothing. The papers he'd been holding earlier were gone. He stopped when he saw what I'd laid out on the dark marble counter with the white veining.
It was a photo I'd taken on my phone that afternoon, printed on plain paper at the drugstore on Lexington. The foundation tower records room. The filing cabinet drawer with the tag that said COLE - V. AUTHORIZATION. My signature, enlarged.
He looked at it, then at me. He didn't pretend not to know what it was.
"I was going to tell you tonight," he said quickly. Too quickly.
I didn't answer right away. The counter was cold under my palms. The city light came through the glass behind us and cut across the wood cabinets. I could hear the refrigerator humming.
"You never told me," I said.
I said it quietly. I let the pause sit there before he spoke. I watched his throat move. His eyes dropped to the marble, then back to my face.
"I know," he said.
That was the first true thing he'd said all day.
He stepped closer but didn't touch the paper. He put his hands on the edge of the counter, fingers spread. His breathing was shallow.
"Where is it?" I said.
He knew I didn't mean the papers he had been holding. I meant the original. The one with the ink that was actually mine.
He hesitated. He looked toward the hallway, toward the front door, like he was checking that we were alone. Then he looked back at me and his shoulders dropped a little.
"Richard told me to hold them," he said. His voice was low. "The first set. The authorization to add me to the foundation account. He said not to file it until after the wedding."
I kept my hands still. "Why."
"Because you wouldn't have signed it if you'd read it carefully," he said. "And he needed your signature. He said the auditors were coming in the spring. He said if I kept you close, if I kept everything calm and normal, you'd sign whatever I put in front of you. He said keep Victoria close."
Hearing him say it out loud, in his own voice, not in a text on Lucy's phone, made it more real than the chat had. Keep Victoria close. Like I was a handle to hold.
"So you held the papers," I said.
He nodded once. "I kept them in my briefcase. I told him you were asking questions about the accounts. He told me to stall."
"And the locket?" I said. I touched the thin gold chain at my neck. The oval with the floral border was warm from my skin.
"That's the key," he said. "Your mom gave it to you, but Richard had the copy made. He had your signature lifted off the back inside. He said it was a tradition, that Cole wives signed the family trust on their wedding day. But he didn't want to wait until the wedding."
I swallowed. My mom's heirloom. The one I'd thought was just hers.
Ethan finally pushed off the counter. He walked to the other side of the island, to the stretch of dark marble over the dark wood cabinetry that ran under the window. He didn't open anything yet. He just stood there with his hand hovering over the seam between two cabinet doors.
"It's not in the safe," he said. "He knew you'd look there."
He crouched. He pressed the bottom edge of the cabinet, and a panel that had always looked like a decorative drawer front clicked and released without a handle. A shallow hidden drawer slid out, no more than three inches deep.
Inside was a single white envelope. Thick. No address, no name. Just a small gold sticker sealing it.
"Where is it," I whispered, more to myself this time.
He didn't touch it. He stepped back and let me come around the island.
I knelt where he'd knelt. The marble was cool on my knees through my dress. The envelope inside was clean, untouched. I could see the faint outline of folded papers inside, and something small and hard in a second sleeve.
I looked up at him. He was standing with his arms at his sides, not trying to fix it, not reaching for me.
"You can take it," he said. "I won't stop you."
May you like
I put my hand in and picked up the envelope. The weight of it told me this was the original. My signature, my locket imprint, the thing he'd been told to keep me close for.
I held it and didn't open it yet. I just stayed there on the floor for a second, breathing, with Ethan standing over me and the city humming beyond the glass.
