Chapter 7: What Daniel Found
He lived twenty minutes away in a building with a doorman who knew my name.
Gerald held the door and said, "Morning, Mrs.
Eleanor," the way he always did, and I said, "Morning, Gerald," the way I always did, and rode the elevator up to the eighth floor feeling like the building itself was holding its breath.
Daniel opened the door before I knocked.
He looked like he'd been sitting very still for a long time and had only just stood up.
His laptop was open on the kitchen counter.
Two coffee cups — one empty, one untouched.
"Sit down," he said.
"You sit down.
You look worse than I do."
He almost smiled.
He pulled out a stool at the counter and I sat.
He stood across from me, turned the laptop to face me.
"I did something I'm not proud of," he said.
"After I dropped you off last night, I went home and I looked her up.
Properly.
Not just her real estate profile.
I went looking."
"What did you find?"
He pointed at the screen.
It was a property listing website.
Vanessa's professional photo in the corner — the careful smile, the blazer.
But the listing wasn't the point.
The point was the review section below it.
One review.
Posted eight months ago.
Three stars.
*Vanessa was initially very attentive and professional.
However, once we were under contract, communication became difficult.
We later discovered she had a personal relationship with the seller that she had not disclosed.
This created a conflict of interest that cost us both time and money.
We would not use her services again.*
Daniel pointed at the username.
*MDavis_Chicago.*
"Marcus Davis," he said.
"I searched the name.
He's a property developer based in Chicago.
He's been working in this area for the last eighteen months."
I looked at the screen.
Then at Daniel.
"She told me this morning," I said.
"That Marcus was someone she'd been seeing before you.
That she was trying to end it."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"She called you this morning?"
"She texted last night.
We met for coffee an hour ago."
"She went to you."
"Yes."
"Instead of me."
"Yes."
He turned away from the counter and walked to the window.
The city was fully awake below him — traffic, movement, the ordinary machinery of a Saturday morning that didn't know or care about any of this.
"She told you she was ending it with him," he said.
"She told me it was already over.
That he wasn't accepting it."
"That's not what this review says." He turned back.
"A conflict of interest.
A personal relationship with the seller she didn't disclose.
That listing closed four months ago, Mom.
Four months ago, she was working a deal with him.
That's not someone she'd ended things with in the spring."
I looked at the review again.
He was right.
"There's more," he said.
He scrolled down.
A second tab was open — a social media page, semi-private, but with a public profile photo.
Marcus Davis.
Broad-shouldered, easy smile, standing in front of a building with a sold sign.
And in the corner of the photo, just visible at the edge of the frame, a woman in a red dress.
The same red dress that had been in the dryer.
"That photo was posted six weeks ago," Daniel said.
"The same week she and I had our third date."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Daniel," I said.
"I know."
"What are you going to do?"
He closed the laptop.
He picked up the untouched coffee cup, looked at it, and set it back down.
"I'm going to call her," he said.
"And I'm going to tell her what I found.
And I'm going to listen to what she says." He looked at me.
"And then I'm done."
"You've already decided."
"I decided last night.
I just needed to be sure I wasn't deciding out of pride." He paused.
"I'm not.
This is something else."
I nodded.
"Will you stay?" he said.
"While I call her.
Not in the room — you don't have to hear it.
Just — here."
"Of course I'll stay."
He picked up his phone.
I moved to the sofa and looked out at the city while he made the call in the kitchen.
I didn't listen.
I looked at the buildings and the sky and thought about Richard, who had been a man who also closed laptops calmly and made phone calls without raising his voice and then came and sat down and said *it's done* with the same steadiness he brought to everything.
Daniel had so much of his father in him.
The call lasted eleven minutes.
I know because I watched the clock on the wall without meaning to.
When he came back into the room, he sat down next to me on the sofa.
"She cried," he said.
"I imagine she did."
"She said Marcus had been pressuring her.
That she didn't know how to get out of it without him causing problems for her professionally."
"Do you believe her?"
He thought about it.
Genuinely thought about it, the way he always did — not rushing to the answer that felt good.
"I believe that part of it is true," he said.
"I also believe she made choices.
And I believe she went to my mother instead of me because she knew I'd ask the questions she didn't have clean answers to."
"Yes," I said.
"I think that's right."
He leaned back against the sofa cushions.
He looked tired in the way that has nothing to do with sleep.
"She asked if we could talk again in a few days," he said.
"When things were calmer."
"What did you say?"
"I said I didn't think that would help either of us."
I put my hand over his.
He turned his palm up and held it, the way he used to when he was small and something had frightened him and he didn't want to say so.
We sat like that for a while.
Then his phone buzzed on the cushion beside him.
He looked at the screen.
His face changed in a way I hadn't seen before.
May you like
"It's not Vanessa," he said slowly.
"It's Marcus."
