Chapter 7: What He Thought He Had
"Think carefully," Ruth said.
"Not what you're afraid of.
What you actually know."
I pressed my fingers flat on the surface of her desk and made myself go back through it slowly.
"Three years ago," I said, "before we were married, I was dealing with a contract dispute at work.
There were emails — internal emails — that were sensitive.
Not illegal.
But sensitive.
A disagreement between me and a senior partner about how a client account was being handled.
I was right.
He was wrong.
It eventually went in my favor.
But the emails were blunt.
The kind of thing that sounds worse out of context than it was."
"Did Adrian have access to those emails?"
"He shouldn't have.
But he used my laptop sometimes.
I wasn't always careful about logging out of my work account." I paused.
"He could have read them.
He could have copied them."
"Would they damage you professionally if they became public?"
"They'd be uncomfortable.
Embarrassing.
Not career-ending." I looked at her.
"But that's not the point, is it?
The point is that he's trying to make me think he has something powerful enough to make me back down."
"Yes," Ruth said.
"That's exactly the point."
She leaned back in her chair.
"Here's what I think he has: an uncomfortable email thread that he's been holding as insurance.
He's been planning this longer than you realized.
The Hartwell filing, the document he showed Priya, the injunction this morning — none of that was improvised.
This was a strategy.
The question is whether the strategy can survive contact with actual evidence."
"Can it?"
"Not if Priya testifies.
Not if we can establish that the document he showed her was fabricated.
Not if Diane's photograph of the Hartwell folder holds up." She tapped her pen.
"The emails he's referencing are a distraction.
He wants you focused on them instead of on what he actually did."
My phone buzzed on the desk between us.
Diane.
I answered immediately.
"Diane."
"They called me." Her voice was tight.
"A lawyer from Hartwell.
He said I was named in a filing.
He said if I continued to — he used the phrase 'interfere in marital proceedings' — that I could face legal consequences."
"It's a pressure tactic," I said.
"Ruth is here.
She'll explain it."
I handed the phone to Ruth.
She spent four minutes with Diane — calm, direct, no reassurance that wasn't earned.
At the end she said, "I need you to come to my office today.
Bring the photograph.
Bring your phone.
Don't delete anything and don't speak to anyone from Hartwell without me on the line."
She handed the phone back.
"I'll be there at noon," Diane said to me.
Then, quieter: "Claire.
Are you all right?"
I looked at the bruise in the reflection of Ruth's dark computer screen.
The color had deepened overnight.
It curved from my temple toward my cheekbone in a shape that looked almost deliberate.
"I will be," I said.
After I hung up, Ruth looked at me for a moment.
"I want to ask you something," she said.
"And I need an honest answer."
"All right."
"Last night.
The plate." She didn't look away.
"Is that the first time?"
I held her gaze.
"The first time with an object," I said.
"Not the first time he put his hands on me."
She wrote something on her pad.
She didn't ask me to elaborate.
She didn't offer sympathy.
She simply wrote it down, and the act of her writing it down — of it becoming a documented fact in a room with a witness — made something shift in my chest.
"I'll need a full account," she said.
"Dates, circumstances, anything you remember.
We're not just fighting a property petition anymore." She set her pen down.
"He hjt you in front of thirty witnesses.
Several of them are his own family members.
That changes the shape of everything."
"His family won't testify against him."
"Diane will."
I hadn't thought of that.
"And the child who was at the table," Ruth continued.
"Someone brought that child.
That child has a parent.
That parent watched what happened." She looked at me steadily.
"People who stay quiet in the room don't always stay quiet afterward.
Especially when a lawyer calls and explains what they witnessed."
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
Different area code this time — not San Francisco.
I looked at Ruth.
"Answer it," she said.
I did.
"Ms.
Whitmore?" A man's voice.
Older.
Formal.
"My name is Thomas Reeve.
I'm a notary public licensed in the state of California.
I received a call this morning from a woman named Priya — I believe you know her.
She described a document she was shown that purportedly bore my stamp and my registration number." A pause.
"Ms.
Whitmore, I need you to understand something.
I did not notarize any document transferring or affecting your property.
Not three weeks ago.
Not ever.
If my stamp appeared on such a document, it was placed there without my knowledge or authorization."
The room was very still.
"Mr.
Reeve," I said carefully, "would you be willing to put that in writing?"
"I've already drafted a statement," he said.
"I can have it to your lawyer within the hour.
I want to be very clear about my position.
My license and my professional reputation are attached to that stamp.
Whoever used it committed a serious crjme, and I intend to cooperate fully with any investigation."
May you like
I looked at Ruth.
She was already reaching for her pen.
