Chapter 5: What Daniel Told Her
I stepped into the hotel corridor and called the number back.
She answered on the second ring.
"Rachel?" I said.
"Yes." Her voice was young.
Cautious.
"Is this Jennifer?"
"It is.
How do you have my number?"
"Chloe gave it to me.
She asked me to reach out." A pause.
"She doesn't know I'm calling right now, actually.
I'm doing this on my own."
I moved further down the corridor, away from the banquet room doors.
"What did Daniel tell her about me?"
Rachel took a breath.
"He told her you knew.
About the two of them.
From the beginning."
I stopped walking.
"He told Chloe that you and he had an arrangement," Rachel continued.
"That your marriage was already over before she got pregnant.
That you had agreed to stay together quietly for a while for appearances, and then you'd separate amicably.
He said you were fine with everything.
That you were actually relieved."
The corridor was air-conditioned and very quiet.
"She believed him," I said.
"She wanted to," Rachel said.
"I think she needed to.
It was easier than the alternative."
"The alternative being that she was the other woman."
"Yes."
I leaned against the wall.
Down the corridor, a family was walking toward the elevator — two small children, a grandmother carrying a gift bag, everyone laughing about something.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because I was with Chloe in the car just now when she got a text from someone at the party.
One of Daniel's coworkers.
He told her what happened in there.
What you put on the table." Rachel's voice steadied.
"Chloe has been crying for twenty minutes.
Not because she's angry at you.
Because she just realized that everything Daniel told her was a lie.
She didn't know you were pregnant at the same time as her.
She didn't know about the joint account.
She thought the money was his personal savings."
I closed my eyes for a moment.
"Where is she now?"
"Still in the car.
Daniel went out to her about ten minutes ago.
I don't know what he's saying to her."
"Is the baby all right?"
"The baby's fine.
She's a girl.
Three weeks old." A small hesitation.
"Her name is Lily."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"He named them both Lily," I said.
"I'm sorry," Rachel said quietly.
"I don't think Chloe knew your daughter's name."
I stood there in the corridor for a moment, holding that information.
Two women.
Two newborns.
Both named Lily.
Daniel had not even bothered to be creative about it.
"Rachel," I said.
"Does Chloe have family nearby?
Someone she can call tonight?"
"Her sister.
She lives about forty minutes out."
"Tell her to call her sister.
Tonight." I pushed off the wall and started walking back toward the banquet room.
"And tell Chloe — when she's ready, not tonight, but when she's ready — that she can contact my attorney's office.
Patricia Holt.
If Daniel made financial promises to her using money that came from our joint account, she has a right to know what that means legally."
A silence.
"You're helping her," Rachel said.
It came out half question, half disbelief.
"She was lied to," I said.
"Same as me.
She just didn't know it yet."
I pushed open the banquet room door.
My mother looked up from where she was sitting with Lily.
"Everything all right?" she asked.
"Not yet," I said.
"But it's going to be."
I sat down across from my mother.
Lily was awake now, her eyes open and unfocused the way they always were at this hour, her small fist pressed against her cheek.
I reached across and took her hand.
Her fingers closed around my index finger automatically.
My mother watched me.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to finish what I started," I said.
My mother nodded slowly.
She reached across the table and covered my free hand with hers.
We sat like that for a while, the three of us in the empty room, while outside in the parking lot Daniel was telling Chloe whatever version of the truth he had assembled on the walk from the door to the car.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was Patricia Holt's office number.
Not Patricia herself — it was after hours — but the emergency line she had given me three months ago when we first met.
I answered.
"Jennifer." It was Patricia's paralegal, Marcus.
"I just got an alert.
A joint account in your name and Daniel's was accessed twenty minutes ago.
A transfer was initiated.
Forty-two hundred dollars."
I looked at the remaining bill slip still on the table.
"To what account?" I asked.
"We're pulling that now," Marcus said.
"But Jennifer — the transfer was flagged because of the freeze order we put in place last week.
It didn't go through."
"He tried to move money," I said.
"Tonight.
While we were still in this room."
"It looks that way."
I picked up the bill slip from the table and turned it over in my hand.
May you like
"Marcus," I said.
"Add it to the file."
