Chapter 4: The Account He Never Mentioned
I held the paper out so he could see it clearly.
"Who is this account?"
He didn't answer immediately.
His eyes moved from the paper to Rachel to me, calculating something.
"It's a business arrangement."
"What business?"
"It's complicated."
"You keep saying that." I folded the paper and put it in my own pocket.
"Try something simpler."
"Give me that—"
"No."
He stepped toward me.
I didn't move.
"That's a private financial document—"
"Then you should have kept it somewhere your daughter couldn't find it."
A man in the row beside us shifted in his seat.
My husband lowered his voice.
"We are not doing this here."
"You don't get to decide where we do this anymore." I looked at Rachel.
"How long have you known about the account?"
"Your daughter only sent it to me ten days ago.
I didn't know about it before that."
"But you knew him well enough that she trusted you with it."
Rachel didn't flinch.
"Yes."
"Why?
Why would she go to you?
She saw you in her kitchen.
You were the person who—" I stopped.
Steadied myself.
"Why would she trust you?"
Rachel was quiet for a moment.
"Because I contacted her first.
About a year after everything happened, I reached out to apologize.
Not to your husband — to her.
I found her on social media and I sent her a message and I told her that what happened was not her fault and that she should never have been put in that position." Rachel paused.
"She didn't respond for almost six months.
Then one day she did.
We've been talking, carefully, ever since."
I looked at my husband.
"Did you know that?"
His jaw tightened.
"No."
"Your fourteen-year-old daughter found more comfort in the woman you cheated with than in you." I let that sit.
"That tells me everything."
"You don't understand the full picture—"
"Then paint it.
Right now.
Who is the account registered to?"
Silence.
"Is it a person or a company?"
Nothing.
"Is it someone I know?"
He looked away.
Down the aisle.
Toward the front of the plane, as if an exit might appear.
"It's my brother," he said finally.
I hadn't expected that.
"Daniel?"
"It's not what it looks like."
"You've been sending Daniel significant amounts of money for two years and you never mentioned it to me."
"He needed help.
It was a private matter between brothers."
"We have joint finances.
There is no private matter between brothers that doesn't involve me."
"I was going to tell you—"
"When?
After how long?" I pulled the paper back out.
The transfers went back twenty-two months.
"You've been doing this for nearly two years.
You had two years of opportunities to tell me."
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Daniel got into some trouble.
Financial trouble.
He needed money quickly and he didn't want anyone to know.
I helped him."
"How much?"
He didn't answer.
I looked at the bottom of the statement.
Added the figures in my head.
It took me a moment because I didn't want the number to be what it was.
"This is over forty thousand pounds."
A woman across the aisle looked up from her book.
My husband's voice dropped further.
"Keep your voice down."
"Forty thousand pounds, transferred out of an account with your name on it, which means it came from money we both earned, and you never told me." I folded the paper again.
"What kind of trouble was Daniel in?"
The pause before his answer was one beat too long.
"Debt."
"What kind of debt?"
"The kind you don't ask too many questions about."
Rachel made a small sound.
Not quite a laugh.
More like recognition.
I turned to her.
"You know something about this too."
"Not the details," she said.
"But your daughter mentioned Daniel's name in one of her messages.
She said she'd heard your husband on the phone with him.
She said the call frightened her."
"Frightened her how?"
Rachel looked at my husband.
He was very still now.
"She said he was crying," Rachel said.
"She'd never heard her father cry before.
She said he kept saying, 'I can't keep doing this, I can't keep doing this.' And then he said a name."
"What name?"
Rachel hesitated.
My husband said, very quietly, "Don't."
There it was again.
That one word.
May you like
Rachel said the name anyway.
It wasn't Daniel's.
