The clock ticked on the wall.
Outside, a car passed slowly down the street, its engine fading into afternoon silence.
Finally, I said, “You need to start from the beginning.”
Grace gave a small, tired laugh.
“I wish I knew where the beginning was.”
“Try.”
Another pause.
“My sister met Lucas last year at a professional development conference in Boulder. She works in commercial design. He was charming. Funny. Attentive. Exactly the kind of man who makes you feel like the room has narrowed around you.”
I hated how well I understood that.
Lucas had made me feel that way once.
When we first met at a charity auction five years earlier, he had seemed almost impossibly present. He remembered small details. He asked questions and listened to the answers. On our third date, he brought me tea from a shop I’d mentioned only once. When my father died, he became patient and gentle in a way that felt like shelter.
He had built himself carefully.
Or maybe he had built whatever each woman needed.
Grace continued. “Melanie told me he was separated.”
My mouth tightened.
“Of course he did.”
“She didn’t know about you at first.”
“And then?”
“She found out four months ago.”
My heart gave a dull thud.
Four months.
Four months of knowing.
“Did she care?”
Grace did not answer quickly. That, at least, I respected.
“She cried for two days,” she said at last. “Then Lucas told her you knew the marriage was over. That the two of you were quietly dividing things. That he didn’t want to upset you publicly before his work transition.”
I looked around my study, at the framed photograph on the bookshelf from our trip to Santa Fe. Lucas’s arm around my shoulders. My head turned toward him, laughing at something he had said.
Quietly dividing things.
“He told her I was emotionally fragile, didn’t he?”
Grace’s silence was enough.
I smiled without humor.
“He always did like making women feel like someone needed protecting.”
“I’m not defending her,” Grace said. “I’m just telling you what she believed.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know what she believes. She won’t speak to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I told her Lucas was lying.”
I closed the laptop without completing the transfer.
The sound seemed louder than it should have been.
Grace noticed.
“You didn’t move the money?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Don’t mistake that for trust.”
“I don’t.”
I stood and walked toward the hallway.
The coat closet door stuck slightly, as it always did in dry weather. I pulled it open, pushed aside winter jackets, and crouched before the safe.
My fingers moved over the keypad.
My birthday.
Lucas had insisted it was too obvious. I had joked that burglars didn’t know my birthday. He had smiled and said, “I do.”
The safe clicked.
Inside, at first, everything seemed normal.
Passports.
House deed.
Insurance files.
