Chapter 3: What Rosa Knew
I picked up the envelope anyway.
Juliette's hand came forward, but I turned my shoulder and put myself between her and the table.
The envelope was light.
Sealed.
My name was written in careful, deliberate letters — not Juliette's handwriting.
I had seen Juliette's handwriting on birthday cards and shopping lists for eight months.
This belonged to someone else entirely.
"Where did this come from?" I asked.
"It's nothing.
It was already there when we came outside."
"My name is on it."
"Christopher, Emma nearly drowned.
Can we please focus on what matters?"
Emma was sitting on the stone deck wrapped in a towel that Rosa had brought out.
She was watching me with her chin tucked down, the way she always did when she was trying to make herself small.
I looked at her, then back at Juliette.
"Emma is exactly what I'm focusing on," I said, and I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single folded page.
The handwriting was the same as on the outside — careful, slightly slanted, written by someone who had thought hard about every word before putting pen to paper.
I read the first line and felt the terrace go quiet around me.
*Mr.
Harlow — I have worked in your house for eleven months.
I have seen things I should have reported sooner.
I am sorry I waited this long.
Please read all of this before you speak to anyone.*
I looked up.
Rosa was still standing near the doors.
She wasn't looking at the ground anymore.
She was looking at me.
"You wrote this," I said.
She nodded once.
Her eyes were red at the edges.
Juliette made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"Rosa, I told you this was not the way to handle a personal disagreement—"
"It isn't a disagreement," Rosa said.
Her voice came out steadier than I expected.
"And you know it isn't."
I kept reading.
The letter described three separate incidents.
The first was the staircase bruise — Rosa had been at the top of the back stairs when it happened.
She had seen Juliette's hand on Emma's shoulder.
She had seen Emma stumble forward.
She had told herself it might have been an accident.
The second incident was two weeks before that: Rosa had found Emma crying alone in the upstairs hallway, and when she asked what was wrong, Emma had said Juliette told her that if her daddy ever chose between them, he would choose Juliette.
The third incident Rosa described was from the previous month.
She had walked past the study and heard Juliette on the phone.
She had not heard everything.
But she had heard a name.
I stopped reading.
"Who is Daniel Forsythe?" I asked.
The name landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Rosa's breath caught.
Emma looked up from her towel.
And Juliette — for the first time since I had pulled my daughter out of the pool — went completely still.
"I don't know anyone by that name," she said.
But her left hand moved to her wrist and closed around it.
She did that when she was lying.
I had noticed it twice before and filed it away as a nervous habit.
Now I understood it was something else.
"Rosa heard you say his name on the phone," I said.
"In my study.
Last month."
"Rosa misheard."
"What were you doing in my study?"
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"Juliette." My voice came out flat.
"What were you doing in my study?"
"I was looking for a pen."
"My study is locked.
I'm the only one with a key."
Her chin lifted.
The calculation was back behind her eyes, the same expression I had seen beside the pool when she was deciding which version of events would hold.
She was running through her options.
I could almost watch her doing it.
Emma stood up from the deck.
The towel slipped from her shoulders and she didn't pick it up.
She walked to me and took my hand, and I felt her small fingers wrap around two of mine the way she used to do when she was four years old and frightened of thunder.
"Daddy," she said quietly.
"She has a key.
I saw her use it."
I looked down at my daughter.
Then I looked at Juliette.
"I want you to leave," I said.
"Right now.
Take your bag and go."
"Christopher, you are making a serious mistake—"
"Rosa, please call the front gate and let them know Ms.
Juliette Marchand is leaving and her access code is to be deactivated immediately."
Rosa already had her phone in her hand.
Juliette picked up her handbag slowly.
She looked at Emma once — not the warning look from before, something different.
Something that made me step forward so that Emma was fully behind me.
"You'll want to know who Daniel Forsythe is," Juliette said at the door.
"Before this is over, you'll want to know very badly."
She walked inside.
I heard her heels on the marble floor, then the front door, then nothing.
Emma pressed her forehead against my arm.
Rosa stood with her phone still raised, watching the terrace doors.
I looked down at the letter in my hand and found the line where Rosa had written the name again.
*Daniel Forsythe.
May you like
She said: tell him the access is confirmed.*
Access to what?
