Chapter 8: Face to Face
She sat in the car for almost two minutes before she got out.
I watched her in the side mirror.
She was on her phone, typing quickly, then she put it in her pocket and opened the door.
She walked toward us with her chin up and her shoulders set — the posture of someone who had decided, in those two minutes, exactly what she was going to say.
David ended his call to Gerald.
"She's here, isn't she."
"Yes."
He opened his door.
Emma stopped a few feet from the car.
She looked at David, then at me through the windscreen, then back at David.
"I just want to talk," she said.
"That's all."
"Then talk," David said.
She glanced at me again.
"Privately."
"No," David said.
"Whatever you have to say, you can say it here."
Her expression shifted — just slightly, just for a moment — and I saw the calculation in it.
She had prepared for several versions of this conversation.
She was selecting one now.
"I know how this looks," she said.
"I know what your mother has shown you.
But there are things she hasn't told you, David.
Things about who she really is and what she's capable of."
"Like the letter," David said.
She blinked.
She hadn't expected that.
"She told you," Emma said.
"She told me everything," David said.
"Including what the letter actually said, and why my father wrote it.
Did you know he left because he'd been having an affair?
Did you know that part when you decided to use it against her?"
Emma's chin came up.
"That's her version."
"Do you have another version?
With evidence?
Because I have sixty thousand dollars in transfers to a company registered to Marcus Hale, and I have a property deed with only your name on it, and I have an email chain going back four years." He paused.
"What do you have?"
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
"Emma," he said, and his voice was not angry — it was something quieter and more final than anger, "I need you to understand something.
I'm not doing this because my mother turned me against you.
I'm doing this because I sat in her back room yesterday and heard you threaten to take my children away from their grandmother to force her to hand over her retirement savings." He took a step toward her.
"I heard you.
Every word."
The colour left her face.
"That's who you are," David said.
"I didn't need anyone to tell me that.
I heard it myself."
Emma was silent for a long moment.
The street was empty.
The grey afternoon held everything very still.
Then something changed in her expression.
The calculated composure cracked, and what came through wasn't remorse.
It was something harder.
"You have no idea how lonely it has been," she said.
Her voice was low and tight.
"Six years of being second.
Six years of every decision running through her first.
Every holiday, every house, every choice.
You think I don't know that you call her before you call me?
You think I don't know she's the first person you go to when anything goes wrong?"
David was quiet.
"I'm not saying what I did was right," Emma said.
"But I want you to stand there and honestly tell me that your mother has never come first in this marriage."
A long silence.
"She came first yesterday," David said finally, "because she was the one being threatened."
Emma looked at him.
Her eyes were bright.
"I want to see the children," David said.
"Tonight.
I'll come to Diane's and collect them."
"And then what?" Emma said.
"And then Patricia Osei will be in touch with your solicitor." He picked up his phone from the car roof.
"I'd recommend you call yours before the end of the day."
He walked back around to the driver's side.
Emma stood on the pavement and watched him.
As he opened the door, she said one more thing.
"I never hated her, you know." Her voice had changed again — quieter, stripped of strategy.
"I was just afraid of losing you to her.
And I handled it in the worst possible way."
David paused with his hand on the door.
"I know," he said.
And he got in.
We drove in silence for a full minute before he spoke.
"Patricia needs to know about that conversation," he said.
"I should have recorded it."
"I did," I said.
He looked at me.
I held up my phone.
The recording app was still running.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Old habit.
I've been careful for a long time."
For the first time that day, something close to a smile crossed his face.
May you like
"Yes," he said quietly.
"You have."
