A woman let her kids destroy our café table and told me, "They're just children." — then my husband pulled up and she walked straight to his car.

"Max." I said his name once, clearly.

He stopped with his hand on the door.

"Don't call him," I said.

"Patricia just told you not to."

"She's your lawyer.

Not mine."

"She's trying to help you."

"She's trying to help you." He said it without anger, just flatly, like a correction.

"That's her job.

And Daniel is my brother."

"Daniel put you in this position."

"I made my own choices."

"Yes.

You did.

And now you're about to make another one." I crossed the kitchen and stood between him and the door.

Not blocking it — just present.

"If you call him tonight, he will know that I know about him.

And a man who has done this twice before will not sit still when he finds out the wife has a lawyer."

Max looked at me.

"He wouldn't do anything."

"You said he had a contact who could delay the audit.

You said he walked away clean from two other accounts while other people took the loss." I kept my voice steady.

"What makes you think he'll treat you differently?"

Something moved across his face.

Not anger.

Something closer to fear.

"He's my brother," he said again.

But it came out quieter this time.

"I know." I reached out and took the phone from his hand.

He let me.

"Sit down."

He sat.

I called Patricia back and told her Max was staying put.

She said she'd have a colleague reach out to a contact at the regulatory board in the morning — quietly, to understand the exposure before the audit date.

She said not to move any money, not to delete any emails, and not to speak to Daniel.

When I hung up, Max was sitting at the table with his hands flat in front of him.

"What happens to Daniel?" he asked.

"I don't know.

That depends on what the investigators find."

"He has kids."

"So do you."

He flinched.

"I'm not trying to be cruel," I said.

"But you have a daughter whose college money is sitting in a business account right now.

That is the thing in front of us."

He nodded slowly.

We sat in silence for a while.

Outside, the light was going flat and gold the way it does in late afternoon, and I could hear the neighbor's dog somewhere down the street.

"Do you still love me?" he asked.

I looked at him.

"I don't know what I feel right now," I said.

"I know I'm angry.

I know I'm scared.

I know I'm exhausted." I folded my hands on the table.

"But I'm still here.

That has to count for something."

"It does," he said quietly.

Lily came home at four-thirty, dropped by a neighbor after her playdate, and the house shifted back into the shape it always took when she was in it — louder, warmer, more real somehow.

She climbed into Max's lap at the kitchen table and told him about the hamster she'd seen at her friend's house.

He listened.

He asked the right questions.

He laughed at the right moments.

I watched them and felt something complicated move through me that I didn't have a name for yet.

That night, after Lily was in bed, my phone rang.

Unknown number.

I answered.

"Is this Max's wife?" A man's voice.

Smooth.

Careful.

"Who is this?"