Chapter 3: What the Letter Said
I didn't open it immediately.
I stood there holding the folded paper with Claire's name on the front, and for a moment the room felt like it had tipped sideways.
Marlene took one step toward me.
"Give that to me.
It's private."
"Private." I turned the word over like it was something I'd never heard before.
"You had a letter addressed to my wife.
My wife who has been d*ad for two years.
In a purse you brought into my house.
And you're telling me it's private."
"It's not what you think."
"Then tell me what it is."
She didn't answer.
I unfolded the paper.
It was a single page.
Handwritten.
The date at the top was three weeks before Claire's accident.
The handwriting was Marlene's — I had seen it on birthday cards, on grocery lists left on our counter, on the note she'd tucked into Lily's lunchbox the first day of school.
I read the first line.
Then I read it again.
*Claire — if you show this to him, I will make sure you lose everything.
The house.
Lily.
All of it.
You know I can.*
My mouth went dry.
"What did you do to her?"
Marlene's chin came up.
"I protected this family."
"From what?
From Claire?"
"From what she was about to do."
I looked at Lily.
She was watching me with those careful eyes, still pressed against the wall, still not moving.
I crossed to her, crouched down, and kept my voice low.
"Sweetheart.
Can you go to your room for me?
Just for a few minutes."
She didn't move right away.
She looked at Marlene once more — that same look, measuring, cautious — and then she nodded and slipped past me through the door.
I waited until I heard her footsteps on the stairs.
Then I stood up and faced my mother.
"Sit down," I said.
"And start from the beginning."
Marlene sat.
She folded her hands in her lap the way she always did when she was preparing to manage a situation rather than answer one.
"Claire was going to leave you," she said.
"She had a plan.
She'd spoken to a solicitor.
She was going to take Lily and move away.
I found out."
"How?"
A pause.
"I had access to her email."
The air went out of the room.
"You hacked her email."
"I had her password.
She gave it to me once when she needed help with something.
I kept it."
"That was years ago."
"Yes."
I set the letter down on the desk between us.
"So you read her emails.
You found out she was planning to leave.
And then you wrote her this."
"I was trying to keep this family together."
"You threatened her.
You told her you'd take her daughter."
"I told her what would happen if she broke up this family over nothing."
"Over nothing." I picked the letter back up.
"What was she leaving over, Marlene?
What was she running from?"
Marlene's hands tightened in her lap.
"That's not relevant now."
"It is the only thing that is relevant."
She looked at the window.
Outside, the afternoon light was going flat and grey.
"She thought you were unhappy," Marlene said finally.
"She thought the marriage was failing.
She was going to take Lily somewhere she could start again.
I told her that if she tried, I would testify that she was unstable.
That she was an unfit mother.
I had things I could use."
"What things?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"She'd had a breakdown before you met her.
Before Lily.
She'd spent six weeks in a facility.
She was terrified of anyone finding out.
Terrified it would affect custody."
I sat down slowly in the chair behind the desk.
Claire had told me about that herself.
On our third date.
Over bad wine in a restaurant with sticky menus.
She'd told me like she was confessing something shameful, and I'd reached across the table and held her hand and told her it didn't change a single thing.
She'd cried.
I remembered that.
She'd said I was the first person who hadn't flinched.
"She told me," I said quietly.
"She told me herself."
Marlene blinked.
"What?"
"She told me about the breakdown.
Years ago.
I already knew."
The colour shifted in Marlene's face.
Not guilt — something closer to recalculation.
"Then your threat meant nothing," I said.
"She had nothing to be afraid of.
And she still didn't leave."
"She stayed because of Lily."
"She stayed because she loved me.
And you spent the last years of her life making her feel like a prisoner in her own marriage."
Marlene said nothing.
I looked down at the letter again.
At the date.
Three weeks before the accident.
The question I hadn't let myself ask since the moment I found the photograph was sitting in my chest now, pressing outward.
"Marlene." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"The accident.
The night Claire d*ed."
May you like
She looked at me.
"Where were you that evening?"
