Chapter 7: Sunday
Daniel arrived first.
He was thirty-one, taller than his father, with the same jaw but none of the same instinct for misdirection.
He hugged me at the door the way he had since he was small — fully, without reservation — and I held on a moment longer than usual.
"You look good, Mom," he said, pulling back to look at me.
"I feel better than I did."
Melissa came twenty minutes later.
She was quieter than her brother, more careful with her words, and I could see from the way she sat down at the kitchen table that she'd been turning things over since our phone call.
I made coffee.
I set the envelope in the center of the table.
I sat down across from both of them.
"Before I show you anything," I said, "I want to ask you something.
When your father called you — did he ask you to do anything?
Say anything?
To me, or to anyone else?"
Daniel looked at Melissa.
Melissa looked at her hands.
"He asked me to talk to you," Melissa said.
"To try to get you to — he said, to be reasonable about the settlement."
"He asked me if I knew who your lawyer was," Daniel said.
His voice was flat.
"He wanted her name."
I nodded slowly.
"Okay," I said.
"Then I'm going to show you something, and I need you to read it without saying anything until you're finished."
I opened the envelope and laid the pages out in order.
The expense reports.
The reconciliation sheets.
The email to Diane.
They read in silence.
Daniel finished first.
He set the last page down carefully and looked at the wall above my head.
Melissa read more slowly.
When she finished, she didn't put the pages down.
She held them.
"The email," she said.
"He was asking her to lie."
"Yes."
"For the divorce proceedings."
"Yes."
She set the pages down.
Her hands were very still.
"How long have you known about all of this?"
"The account — three days.
The rest came to me this week."
"And before that?
Before you found the box?"
I looked at her.
"I knew he'd left me for another woman.
I knew he thought I'd let myself go.
That was all I knew."
Daniel made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
"He told me," he said slowly, "that you'd been struggling.
That you'd stopped taking care of yourself.
That he'd been worried about you for years before he left." He paused.
"He made it sound like leaving was — like it was almost an act of concern."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Look at me," I said.
He did.
"Does that match anything you've seen?
In this house?
In twenty-seven years?"
He shook his head.
Once.
Definitively.
Melissa reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"What do you need from us?" she said.
"Nothing.
I don't need you to do anything.
I just needed you to know the truth." I looked at both of them.
"Whatever happens with the settlement, whatever happens with his job — that's between me and my lawyer and the process.
I'm not asking you to take sides."
"You're not taking sides," Daniel said.
"You're showing us facts."
"Your father is still your father.
That doesn't change."
"No," Melissa said quietly.
"But this does."
She squeezed my hand once and didn't let go.
We sat there for a while, the three of us, the coffee going slightly cold, the pages spread across the table between us.
Outside, the afternoon light was long and gold across the kitchen floor.
Daniel picked up one of the expense reports and looked at it again.
May you like
"Mom," he said.
"I want you to use all of it."
