Chapter 7: The Press Threat
Ethan read the message twice.
Then he turned the phone so Claire and Richard could see it.
Claire read it.
Set the phone down.
"She's frightened."
"She's not frightened," Richard said quietly.
"She's escalating.
There's a difference."
Ethan picked the phone back up and typed a reply.
*Do not contact me again tonight.
Anything you need to communicate, send to my solicitor.*
He sent it before he could second-guess the wording.
Three dots appeared immediately.
Then they stopped.
Then they disappeared.
She didn't reply.
"What does she think she knows?" Claire asked.
"About Dad.
What could she possibly have?"
"Nothing real," Richard said.
"But real isn't the point.
The point is the headline.
The point is the suggestion." He looked at Ethan.
"She knows that even a false story, reported in the right way, does damage that the correction never fully repairs."
Ethan sat back down.
"Then we move first."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we don't wait for her to go to the press.
We go to Gerald Marsh at nine in the morning.
We pull every record.
We contact Patrick Alderton.
We take the notebook, the letter, the security footage, and the police complaint she filed — and we put it all in front of a solicitor today." He looked at his father.
"Are you willing to do that?"
"I've been willing for fourteen months," Richard said.
"I was waiting for you."
That landed somewhere in Ethan's chest that he didn't have words for yet.
He nodded.
"Then we do it tomorrow."
---
Margaret left just after one in the morning.
Claire stayed, sleeping in her old room at the end of the hall.
Richard went to bed shortly after two, moving slowly up the stairs, one hand on the rail.
Ethan sat alone at the kitchen table with the notebook, the letter, and his phone.
He pulled up his banking app.
He went to the joint account — the one he and Sophia shared for household expenses.
He scrolled back through the last six months of transactions.
The pattern was there once he knew to look for it.
Small withdrawals.
Never more than four hundred at a time.
Always in cash.
Always on days when Ethan was traveling for work.
He scrolled further back.
Twelve months.
Eighteen months.
The withdrawals had started almost exactly fourteen months ago.
The same month his father had opened the notebook.
He set the phone face-down on the table.
He sat in the quiet kitchen for a long time.
Then he picked up the phone again and searched for Patrick Alderton.
It didn't take long.
The man had a professional profile — an architect, based two counties over.
Married now, by the look of it.
A family photograph on the firm's website.
A woman and two young children standing in front of a house with a bright red door.
Ethan looked at the photograph for a moment.
Patrick Alderton looked like a man who had managed to build something good after something bad.
Ethan found a contact email on the website.
He wrote three sentences.
He said who he was.
He said he believed they had someone in common.
He said he would understand completely if Patrick didn't want to respond.
He sent it.
Then he turned off the kitchen light and went upstairs.
He did not go to the bedroom he shared with Sophia.
He went to the spare room at the end of the hall, lay down on top of the covers fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling until the light outside the window began to change.
His phone buzzed at 6:14 AM.
A reply from Patrick Alderton.
May you like
*I've been waiting seven years for someone to send me this message.
Call me whenever you're ready.*
