Chapter 4: What Percy Didn't Know Either
Percy came to find me twenty minutes later.
I was inside the kitchen, pouring a glass of water, giving myself sixty seconds away from the noise and the heat and the feeling that my chest was slowly being compressed from both sides.
I heard her heels on the tile before I saw her.
She stopped in the doorway.
Up close, she was younger than I had imagined.
Not in a cruel way.
Just young.
There was something uncertain in her face that I hadn't expected.
"I need to talk to you," she said.
"I don't think you do."
"Please." She didn't move from the doorway.
"Five minutes."
I set the glass down.
"Say what you came to say."
She looked over her shoulder toward the yard, then back at me.
She was holding her own hands in front of her, fingers laced.
"The agency," she said.
"The shell company.
I didn't know about it."
"That's between you and your conscience."
"Nora." She said my name like she had practiced it.
"He told me you two were separated when we started.
He said the divorce was already in process.
He showed me paperwork."
I looked at her.
"What paperwork?"
"A separation agreement.
He said you'd both signed it.
That it was just waiting on the court date." She swallowed.
"I believed him.
I know how that sounds.
But I believed him."
The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of children outside.
"When did he show you this paperwork?" I said.
"About a year ago.
Right when we—" She stopped.
"When things became serious."
A year ago I had been seven months pregnant.
Jordan and I had been sleeping in the same bed.
We had been to our last prenatal appointment together.
He had held my hand in the waiting room.
"There was no separation agreement," I said.
Percy's face did something complicated.
Her jaw tightened.
Her eyes went bright.
"I know that now," she said.
"I figured that out about two months ago.
I found something on his laptop.
A folder." She paused.
"There were other women, Nora.
Not just me.
There were at least two others.
Emails going back three years."
The glass of water was still on the counter in front of me.
"Three years," I said.
"I confronted him.
He told me I was misreading things.
He told me I was paranoid." Her voice had gone flat.
"He's very good at that.
Making you feel like you're the one who's wrong."
I knew exactly what she meant.
I had lived inside that feeling for longer than I wanted to admit.
"Why are you telling me this?" I said.
"Because I have the folder." She reached into her bag and pulled out a USB drive.
Small.
Black.
She set it on the counter between us.
"I copied everything before he could find out I'd seen it.
Names, emails, dates.
Two of the women overlap with the financial transfers Clark found."
I looked at the drive.
I didn't touch it yet.
"You're giving me evidence against him," I said.
"I'm giving you what you deserve to have." She pushed the drive slightly closer to me.
"And honestly?
I'm giving it to myself too.
Because I was lied to, and I'm done pretending that's something I should just accept."
I picked up the drive.
"My lawyer's name is Grace Holloway," I said.
"She'll need a statement from you.
Dates, what he told you, when you found the folder.
Everything."
Percy nodded once.
"I'll do it."
She turned to leave.
At the doorway she stopped.
"For what it's worth," she said, without turning around, "he talked about you sometimes.
When he thought it made him look good.
He said you were too trusting.
That it was almost too easy."
She walked out before I could respond.
I stood in the kitchen for a moment, the USB drive in my palm.
Then I took out my phone and called Grace.
She picked up on the second ring.
"How bad is it?" she said.
"It's worse than we thought," I said.
"I have new evidence.
And I think I have a witness."
A short silence.
"I'll clear my afternoon," Grace said.
"Can you come in tomorrow morning?"
"I'll be there at nine."
I slid the drive into my pocket and walked back outside into the sunshine, where my son was still laughing in the pool and my baby girl was asleep in her stroller under the umbrella, and none of it looked like a battlefield.
But it was.
And for the first time since February, I felt like I was finally armed.
Then my phone buzzed.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
May you like
*You should have left it alone.
This isn't over.*
