Chapter 14 - What Alexander Knew
I asked everyone else to leave.
Even Lucas.
Even Sophie.
My mother refused at first.
Alexander opened the door.
She understood.
Five minutes later, we were alone.
I stood beside the window.
Alexander remained near the door.
“How long?”
He did not pretend he misunderstood.
“Before we married?”
“Yes.”
“Three months.”
My chest tightened.
“You investigated my family for three months?”
“I had a standard background review done when we became serious.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
He exhaled.
“It isn’t.”
I folded my arms.
“What did you find?”
“Your credit history showed accounts you didn’t recognize.”
I stared at him.
“What accounts?”
“The same ones Rebecca found last night.”
My anger came quickly.
“You knew?”
“I knew there were irregularities.”
“How long?”
“About eighteen months.”
We had been married fourteen.
I stepped away from him.
“You married me knowing my family might have stolen from me, and you never told me?”
“I told you there were credit problems.”
“You told me they were clerical mistakes.”
“Because at that point, that was all I could prove.”
“You kept investigating.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt.
I turned away.
For the first time since he arrived, I felt completely alone.
Alexander did not touch me.
He did not tell me I was overreacting.
He waited.
Finally, he said.
“I was wrong.”
I looked at him.
“I thought I was protecting you until I had proof.”
“Everybody protects me by deciding what I’m allowed to know.”
The words struck him.
He lowered his eyes.
“You’re right.”
I had expected an argument.
His agreement somehow made me angrier and sadder.
“Why didn’t you trust me with my own life?”
“I trusted you.”
“No.”
“You trusted yourself to manage the danger.”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
Silence stretched between us.
Then he reached into his coat.
He placed a small folder on the table.
“I was going to give you this after the wedding weekend.”
I did not touch it.
“What is it?”
“Everything my investigator found before we married.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“No missing pages?”
“No.”
“No decisions already made for me?”
“No.”
I opened the folder.
Most of it involved financial records.
There were unexplained addresses.
Loans.
Old corporate filings.
Then I found a photograph.
My mother was leaving a bank.
Beside her was a man I recognized.
Uncle Thomas.
On the back was a date.
Two days after my grandmother died.
I turned the page.
A safe-deposit box had been opened that afternoon.
Its registered owner was Margaret Bennett.
I looked at Alexander.
“What was inside?”
“I don’t know.”
My mother and Thomas had emptied it before anyone could inventory it.
Then I saw one final note.
A bank employee had recorded what they carried out.
Two document cases.
One jewelry box.
And a sealed red envelope labeled EMILY.
May you like
My grandmother had left me something else.
And my mother had taken that too.
