Chapter 3: The Name She Never Mentioned
I stared at the screen for a long moment.
Four words.
No name attached.
No context.
*Ask Tara about Derek.*
Tara was still standing across the kitchen, arms folded, waiting.
I turned the phone face-down on the counter.
"Who's Derek?" I said.
The change in her face was immediate.
Not confusion.
Not the blank look of someone hearing a stranger's name.
Something else moved behind her eyes — fast, controlled, then gone.
"What?"
"Derek.
Who is he?"
"I don't know anyone named Derek." She said it evenly.
Too evenly.
"You sure about that?"
"Marcus, what are you talking about?
We were in the middle of—"
"I know what we were in the middle of." I picked the phone back up and held the screen toward her.
"Someone just texted me and told me to ask you about him."
She looked at the screen.
Her jaw tightened the same way it had when she'd said *she's not mine* — that same controlled clench, like she was deciding how much to give away.
"I don't know who sent that," she said.
"Or why."
"That's not what I asked."
She turned away and picked up her wallet from the counter.
"I'm not doing this right now."
"Tara."
"I said I'm not doing this." She walked toward the hallway.
"This whole conversation started because your daughter took my money, and somehow I'm the one being interrogated."
"Nobody's interrogating you.
I asked you one question."
She stopped at the doorway but didn't turn around.
"Drop it, Marcus."
Then she was gone.
I heard her footsteps on the stairs, then the bedroom door closing.
Not slamming.
Closing.
Carefully.
Which was somehow worse.
I stood in the kitchen alone and looked at the text again.
The number wasn't saved.
I didn't recognize the area code.
I typed back: *Who is this?*
Three dots appeared.
Then stopped.
Then appeared again.
Then nothing.
I set the phone down and looked at the ceiling.
Upstairs, I could hear two sets of footsteps — Tara's, moving toward the back of the house, and Maya's, still and quiet somewhere above the kitchen.
I went to the bottom of the stairs.
"Maya."
A pause.
"Yeah?"
"Come down when you're ready.
We're not done talking."
Another pause.
"Okay."
I went back to the kitchen and sat at the table.
I thought about the way Tara's face had moved when I said that name.
I thought about two years of living together, of building something I thought was solid.
I thought about Maya's face when she'd said *you believe me?* — like it was a question she'd been afraid to ask her whole life.
My phone lit up.
Not the unknown number.
A different one.
A contact I hadn't heard from in almost eight months.
Tara's sister, Renee.
The message was three sentences.
*I heard what happened today.
May you like
I'm sorry.
There's something you need to know about where that money actually went.*
