Chapter 5: What Marcus Already Knew
Nick answered on the third ring.
"Hey." A pause.
"Yeah, she's here." Another pause, longer.
His eyes moved to Susan.
"How long have you known?"
The kitchen went quiet.
Richard pulled out a chair and sat down.
He didn't look at anyone.
"Marcus." Nick's voice tightened.
"How long."
I watched Susan's hand find the edge of the counter.
"Okay," Nick said finally.
"Come over." He ended the call and set the phone face-down on the kitchen table.
"Your brother knew," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"He found out about three weeks ago." Nick looked at Susan.
"He said he tried to talk to you.
That you told him it was handled and to leave it alone."
"It was handled," Susan said.
"He knew I was alive," Nick said to me.
His voice was careful, like he was explaining something he himself was still processing.
"He knew what Mom had done.
And he didn't call you."
"Why not?"
Nick looked at his mother.
Waiting.
Susan straightened.
"Because I asked him not to.
Because I told him the truth — that you and Nick had already lost the connection you had, that reopening it would only cause more pain for everyone."
"You told him we'd lost our connection," I repeated.
"You had.
Nick had moved forward.
He was—"
"I had not moved forward." Nick's voice cut across hers.
"I was trying to.
I was trying because I thought I had no other option.
Because you told me she was gone." He pressed his hands flat on the table.
"I have spent two months trying to stop loving someone who was alive and well and three blocks away."
The refrigerator hummed.
A clock ticked somewhere down the hall.
"I called you," I said to Nick.
"After Susan told me.
I called your number over and over for the first week."
"My phone was damaged in the accident.
I had a new number." He looked at his mother.
"Did you give her the new number?"
Susan said nothing.
"Did you tell her there was a new number to try?"
Silence.
"She blocked me on everything else," I said.
"Every platform.
Every way I had to reach anyone in this family."
Nick pushed back from the table and stood up.
He walked to the window above the sink and stood there with his back to us, looking out at the backyard.
The patio where we'd all just been standing.
The table where I'd left the package.
"I want to ask you something," he said without turning around.
"And I need you to answer me honestly.
Just once.
Just this one time."
Susan waited.
"If the money hadn't been involved," Nick said, "would you still have done it?"
The kitchen held its breath.
"I would have found another reason," Susan said quietly.
Nick turned around.
"At least that's honest," he said.
The front door opened.
Footsteps in the hallway.
Marcus appeared in the kitchen doorway — Nick's younger brother, dark-haired, still in his work clothes, his face carrying the particular expression of someone who had been dreading a room for weeks and had finally walked into it.
He looked at me.
"Hannah," he said.
"I'm sorry.
I should have called you.
I know that."
"Why didn't you?"
He glanced at Susan.
Then back at me.
"Because I was a coward.
Because it was easier to believe Mum when she said it was better this way." He shook his head.
"It wasn't better.
I could see it wasn't better.
Nick was—" He stopped.
"Say it," Nick said.
Marcus looked at his brother.
"You weren't okay.
You were functioning, but you weren't okay.
And I kept telling myself it was grief and it would pass." He pulled out a chair and sat down without being invited.
"Then three weeks ago I found the messages.
The fake ones.
On Mum's old tablet — she hadn't deleted them from the drafts folder." He looked at Susan.
"I confronted her and she told me it was done and to leave it alone."
"And you listened," Nick said.
"For three weeks, yes." Marcus folded his hands on the table.
"Then this morning she called me to say Hannah had shown up at the house.
And I thought — that's it.
That's the moment.
If Hannah's there, it's already over.
The only question is how much damage gets done before the truth comes out."
He looked at me again.
"The account," he said.
"The inheritance.
You didn't know about it, did you."
"I found out twenty minutes ago."
He nodded slowly.
"That's what I thought." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his phone.
He opened something and slid it across the table toward me.
"I took photos of the draft messages on the tablet.
Before Mum could delete them.
Date stamps, the works." He looked at Nick.
"I didn't know what I was going to do with them.
But I knew I needed to have them."
Nick looked at the phone.
Then at his brother.
"Thank you," he said.
Quietly.
Like the words cost him something.
Susan was watching Marcus with an expression that had moved past calculation into something rawer.
"You went through my things," she said.
"You lied to my brother," Marcus said.
"For months.
You let him grieve someone who was alive.
You let Hannah—" He stopped himself.
Looked at me.
"How are you doing right now?
Honestly."
I thought about it.
"I don't know yet," I said.
He nodded.
"That's fair."
Susan pushed back her chair.
"I'm not going to sit here and be put on trial by my own children."
"Then tell us what you think should happen next," Nick said.
"You've managed everything so far.
What's your plan now?"
She looked at him.
For just a moment, the composure slipped — not into guilt, but into something that looked almost like grief.
Like she could see, finally, the full shape of what she'd built and what it had cost.
Then the composure came back.
"I think," she said carefully, "that we should all take some time before anyone does anything they can't undo."
May you like
Nick picked up Marcus's phone from the table.
"I think," he said, "that time has already passed."
