Chapter 5: Four Minutes and Thirty-One Seconds
Nathan stared at the phone.
Daniel didn't move.
He just stood there, phone raised, the red bar of the recording still running.
"Turn that off," Nathan said.
"It's already done," Daniel said.
"I can stop it now or I can keep going.
Your choice."
"You had no right—"
"You handed divorce papers to your wife at your graduation ceremony," Daniel said.
"In a public courtyard.
In front of witnesses." He lowered the phone but didn't put it away.
"I had every right."
Eleanor was very still beside her son.
Gerald had taken another small step back.
He was now standing slightly apart from the family group, his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground.
Nathan turned back to me.
The hardness in his face was still there, but something underneath it was beginning to loosen.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Right now?" I said.
"I want to leave."
"That's not what I mean and you know it."
"I know exactly what you mean." I held the envelope at my side.
"You want to know if I'm going to use this.
You want to know if I'm going to make this expensive and public and damaging to the career you just spent six years building." I looked at him for a long moment.
"I haven't decided yet."
I walked away.
Daniel fell into step beside me.
We crossed the courtyard without speaking.
The crowd had thinned slightly — families drifting toward cars, graduates taking photographs near the entrance arch.
Nobody was watching us.
Or if they were, they had the decency not to show it.
We reached the parking lot.
I stopped beside my car, a ten-year-old Honda that had needed new brake pads for three months and that I had been putting off replacing because the money kept going elsewhere.
"What are you going to do?" Daniel asked.
"I don't know yet." I unlocked the car and set the envelope on the passenger seat.
"Thank you.
For all of it.
For coming to me today."
"I should have come sooner."
"Maybe.
But you came." I looked at him.
"Cassandra's sister — is she all right?"
"She's shaken.
She feels guilty, even though she didn't do anything wrong."
"What's her name?"
"Mia."
"Tell Mia she did the right thing."
Daniel nodded.
He started to turn away, then stopped.
"There's one more thing I didn't mention earlier.
I didn't want to put everything on you at once."
I waited.
"The hospital where Nathan has his residency placement," Daniel said.
"Mercy General."
"That's where Cassandra works."
"Yes.
And the department head who approved Nathan's placement — he's a close friend of Cassandra's father." He paused.
"Nathan's position there wasn't just about his scores."
I looked at him.
"Are you telling me he may not have earned the placement on his own merits?"
"I'm telling you it's worth asking the question."
I sat down in the driver's seat.
The envelope was on the seat beside me.
The brake pads still needed replacing.
The sun was coming through the windshield at an angle that made everything look slightly overexposed.
"Daniel," I said.
"Do you still have contact with Mia?"
"Yes."
"Ask her if she'd be willing to speak with me directly.
Not about the affair.
About the placement."
He looked at me carefully.
"You're not just going to sign the papers and walk away."
"I gave up six years," I said.
"I gave up my degree.
I gave up the version of my life I had planned before I loved him." I started the car.
"I'm not walking away from anything until I understand exactly what was taken from me."
Daniel stepped back from the car.
"I'll call Mia tonight," he said.
I pulled out of the parking space.
In the rearview mirror, the graduation building was still visible, the stone arch, the courtyard, the last few clusters of families.
I didn't look for Nathan.
I didn't need to.
My phone buzzed on the seat beside me as I reached the parking lot exit.
A text from an unknown number.
May you like
*You should have stayed in your lane.
This isn't over.*
