Chapter 6: Victor
We went back through the vestry door.
Daniel came in last and pulled it shut behind him.
The priest was still at the altar.
The guests had begun to murmur.
My mother was standing at the front of the aisle, watching the vestry door, and when she saw my face she came straight to me.
"What happened?"
"There's a car in the parking lot," I said.
"It didn't follow us in.
It just stopped and waited."
"Victor," Ruth said.
She said it the way you say the name of a weather system — not with fear exactly, but with the recognition that it has arrived and the only question now is what you do.
"He wouldn't come inside," Daniel said.
"He's not stupid.
A church full of witnesses." He looked at me.
"But he's sending a message.
He knows we have the box."
"How?"
"Because I called him," Daniel said.
The vestry went very quiet.
"You called him," I repeated.
"Three days ago.
When I got his message." Daniel set the lockbox on the vestry table.
"I called him back.
I told him the wedding was happening and that I had Leo's research and that I was done running." He met my eyes.
"I told him that after today, Monica Reyes would be my wife, and that if he came near either of us, everything in that box would be on a lawyer's desk by morning."
"You used me as a warning," I said.
"I used our wedding as a line in the sand."
"Without telling me."
"Yes." He didn't soften it.
"Without telling you.
Because I needed him to believe it was real.
And it was real.
It is real.
But I needed him to feel the weight of it."
I sat down on the vestry bench.
The lockbox was on the table in front of me.
My wedding dress was cold from the outside air.
"So he came anyway," I said.
"He came to look.
To see if I meant it." Daniel pulled out his phone and dialed.
"Which means he's scared.
And a scared Victor is more dangerous than a comfortable one." He put the phone to his ear.
"I'm calling Carol Marsh."
Ruth sat down across from me.
She folded her hands on the table and looked at me with the directness of someone who had earned the right to say hard things.
"How are you doing?" she asked.
"I don't know yet."
"That's honest."
"Did you know he was going to stop the vows?" I asked.
"Daniel.
Did you know today was the day he was going to tell me?"
"I hoped," she said.
"I've been pushing him for six months.
He kept saying he would tell you after the wedding, and I kept telling him that was the wrong order." She paused.
"He's a good man, Monica.
He's just been carrying Leo's death and his mother's fear and fifteen years of looking over his shoulder, all at the same time.
It makes a person slow to trust that anything good can hold."
Daniel was speaking quietly into the phone.
I caught fragments.
*Yes, today.
The box is with us.
I need you to be ready to move on the filing.* A pause.
*I understand.
We'll come to you.*
He lowered the phone.
"Carol can see us tomorrow morning," he said.
"She says the USB drive is what they've been waiting for.
If the recordings are clean, she can have the case reopened within the week."
"And Victor?" I asked.
"If the case is reopened, he loses the one thing that's kept him safe — the assumption that no one will ever push it far enough." Daniel looked at the vestry door.
"He's in that parking lot because he's afraid.
Not because he's winning."
"He doesn't look afraid from where I'm standing."
"He never does." Daniel sat down at the table across from me.
Not next to me — across, where I could see his face fully.
"Monica.
I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly."
"That would be a first for today," I said.
He absorbed that.
"Do you want to walk away from this?
From me, from the box, from all of it?
Because you can.
Carol can handle Victor without you.
Ruth knows the full history.
You don't have to be part of this."
I looked at the box.
At the strip of tape with my name on it.
"Leo put my name on that box," I said.
"I know."
"He didn't have to.
He could have addressed it to you, or to Carol, or to no one." I looked up.
"He put my name on it because he wanted me to choose.
Not because he was forcing me.
Because he trusted me to make the right call."
Daniel's eyes were very still.
"What's the right call?" he asked.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I know I'm not leaving until I find out what's on that USB drive."
Outside, through the thick vestry wall, I heard the sound of a car engine finally pulling away.
May you like
Victor was gone.
For now.
