Chapter 9 - WHAT HIS MOTHER KNEW
I drove home with both hands locked around the steering wheel.
Callum was waiting in the kitchen.
“How did your mother know?”
He looked sick.
“Deline told her there had been a problem with the renewal.”
“That is not an answer.”
“She said the bank needed you present.”
“And?”
“Mom said you were traveling.”
I stared at him.
“What happened next?”
“Deline joked that you two looked enough alike from a distance.”
My chest tightened.
“You heard that?”
“No.”
“Mom told me later.”
“When?”
“Last spring.”
I had to grip the edge of the island.
“You have known since last spring that Deline may have impersonated me?”
“I didn’t know she actually did.”
“What did you think your mother was telling you?”
“That Deline had found a workaround.”
“A workaround.”
I repeated the word slowly.
“She used my identification.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew enough to ask questions.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
I stepped away from him.
All afternoon, I had imagined Deline as the central betrayal.
Now I understood something worse.
Deline had committed the act.
But silence had built the road she used to reach me.
Callum’s mother had known.
Callum had suspected.
Everybody relied on the same rule.
Do not upset Deline.
“What did your mother say when she told you?”
“That I should leave it alone because the business was doing better.”
I laughed once.
Then I started crying.
Not loudly.
That seemed to frighten Callum.
“Evelyn.”
“Do not touch me.”
He stopped.
I wiped my face.
“You knew there was a chance your sister impersonated your wife to secure financing.”
He lowered his head.
“Yes.”
“And you decided keeping peace with her mattered more than telling me.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That everything would blow up.”
I looked around our kitchen.
The little drawings Renley had taped to the refrigerator.
The bowl we bought on our honeymoon.
The dent in the hardwood where Callum dropped a cast-iron pan six years ago.
Our life.
“You were afraid the family would blow up.”
My voice became steady again.
“So you handed the explosion to me.”
That night, Callum slept in the guest room.
The next morning, I called Claire.
“I want to know my options if I separate.”
She was silent for a moment.
Then she said, “Come in at two.”
At 1:16, before I left, another envelope arrived.
No return address.
Inside was one photocopied document.
A handwritten note was clipped to the front.
It said:
May you like
ASK DELINE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER $60,000.
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