Chapter 4: The Things Chloe Said She Knew
I stared at the message for a long time.
Margaret was watching me.
"What is it?"
I turned the phone so she could read it.
She read it twice.
"Do you want to respond?"
"Not yet." I set the phone face-down on the cushion.
"Let's finish the paperwork first."
We worked through the filing documents for the next forty minutes.
Margaret walked me through each section — the property schedule, the marriage duration, the grounds for dissolution.
She was precise and unhurried, and she asked me every question she needed to ask without once making me feel like a woman falling apart.
When we were done, Denise took the folder to begin the filing process.
Margaret poured two cups of coffee and set one in front of me without asking.
"Are you going to call her?" she said.
"I don't know what Chloe could possibly tell me that changes anything."
"Maybe nothing." Margaret sat back.
"But she reached out before Julian would have known you were here.
That's worth something."
I picked up the phone and read the message again.
*There are things you don't know.*
I typed back: *Where are you?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*Downstairs.
In my car.
I followed you from the hotel.
I'm sorry.
I know how that sounds.*
I showed Margaret.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Your call."
I went down alone.
Chloe was parked at the far end of the small lot beside the building.
I recognized her gray sedan.
She was sitting in the driver's seat and she looked like she hadn't slept either — no makeup, her dark hair pulled back roughly, her eyes red at the edges.
She started to get out of the car when she saw me.
I held up one hand and she stopped.
I got into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"I'm not here to apologize for what I did," she said finally.
"I know that's not what you need from me right now and I know it doesn't matter."
"Then why are you here?"
She reached into the back seat and lifted a manila envelope from the floor.
She held it out to me.
I didn't take it.
"What is that?"
"Copies of text messages between Julian and Garrett Foss," she said.
"Going back eight months.
I took screenshots from Julian's phone six weeks ago.
I didn't know what to do with them.
I didn't know how bad it was until I read them properly last night."
Eight months.
Two months before Leo's condition began to deteriorate.
"Why did you take them?"
Her jaw tightened.
"Because I started to understand what he was actually using me for." She set the envelope on the console between us.
"Clara, he told me you had already agreed to the divorce.
He told me you and he had been separated for over a year, emotionally if not legally.
He told me the house was his — that you had signed it over to him when you got married as a gesture of good faith."
I looked at her.
"I believed him," she said.
"I believed him for a long time.
And then I found the messages."
I picked up the envelope.
Inside were printed screenshots, the text chains small but legible.
I read the first exchange at the top of the first page.
*Julian to Foss, eight months prior: She won't sign anything voluntarily.
We need another approach.*
*Foss to Julian: If we can document a pattern of emotional instability, the petition becomes much easier.
Does she have a therapist?
Medical history we can work with?*
*Julian to Foss: The kid is sick.
She's barely holding it together.
Give it time.*
The kid is sick.
Leo had been four years old and fighting for his life, and Julian had looked at that and seen a timeline.
I set the pages back in the envelope.
"There's more," Chloe said quietly.
"Keep reading."
I looked at the next page.
Halfway down, a message from six weeks ago — the same week Chloe had apparently taken the screenshots.
*Julian to Foss: She found the filing cabinet open.
I covered it.
She's too distracted to push.*
And then, three lines below that, a message that made the air in the car feel very thin.
*Julian to Foss: If the kid doesn't make it, the timeline accelerates.
Grief is the best destabilizer there is.*
I closed the envelope.
Chloe was looking straight ahead through the windshield.
Her hands were folded in her lap and she was very still.
"He knew Leo might not survive," I said.
"And he built a plan around it."
"Yes."
"And you were part of his plan."
"I was." Her voice didn't waver, but her knuckles went white.
"I didn't know it.
And I know that doesn't absolve me of what I did to you.
But I am telling you now because you need this evidence and because what he did to Leo's memory — what he called it — I can't be silent about that."
I held the envelope against my chest.
"I'm going back upstairs," I said.
"My attorney needs to see these."
Chloe nodded.
She didn't ask to come with me.
She didn't ask for anything.
I got out of the car.
I was almost at the building entrance when she called through the open window.
"Clara."
I stopped but didn't turn.
"He has a meeting with Foss this afternoon at two o'clock.
At Foss's office on Sixth Street.
May you like
He thinks you're still in the hotel room."
I walked back inside.
