Chapter 6: Madison Fights Back
She called Nathan seventeen times between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.
He answered on the eighteenth.
I know because he told me afterward, sitting at my kitchen table with Ethan doing homework at the other end of it, and he went through the whole conversation the way you go through something you need to say out loud before you can put it down.
"She started calm," he said.
"Very calm.
She said she could explain everything.
She said the account transfer was a misunderstanding, that she thought I'd already authorized it, that she was just trying to get ahead of the paperwork so we could enjoy the honeymoon."
"And the separation filing?"
"She said her attorney advised her to do it as a protective measure.
Because of me." He looked at his hands.
"She said I'd been emotionally distant for months.
That she was afraid I was going to leave her after the wedding and she needed to protect herself."
"She filed before the wedding."
"I said that.
She said the timeline was a technicality."
Ethan turned a page in his workbook without looking up.
"Then she stopped being calm," Nathan said.
"What did she say?"
"She said if I pursued the bank complaint, she would tell people I had been controlling her finances for the entire relationship.
That I had isolated her from her family.
That she had documentation." He paused.
"She said she had texts."
"What texts?"
"She didn't specify.
She just said she had them and that I didn't want this to become a public dispute."
I looked at him.
"She's threatening you."
"Yes."
"With fabricated evidence."
"Probably.
But probably doesn't help me if she shows it to the right people before I can respond."
Ethan put his pencil down.
"Uncle Nathan."
We both looked at him.
"When she was on the phone before the wedding," Ethan said carefully, "she wasn't just talking to Daniel."
Nathan leaned forward.
"What do you mean?"
"She called someone else after.
A different call.
I was still in the hallway.
She didn't come back out for a while so I waited." He looked at Nathan.
"She called someone and she said, 'He's going to be easier than we thought.
He trusts her completely and she has no idea.' And then she laughed."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"She trusts her," I said.
"Who is she?"
Ethan shrugged.
"She didn't say a name."
Nathan sat back.
"Someone else knew.
Someone she was reporting to."
"Or working with," I said.
Nathan's phone buzzed on the table.
He looked at the screen.
His face changed.
"It's Mom," he said.
He answered it on speaker.
"Nathan." My mother's voice was careful.
Measured.
The voice she used when she had already decided something.
"I've been speaking with Madison."
"I know."
"She's very upset.
She feels ambushed.
She feels like this family has turned on her before she's even had a chance to—"
"Mom.
She filed for separation two days before the wedding and moved sixty-four thousand dollars out of my account."
Silence.
"She told me about that," my mother said.
"She said it was a misunderstanding and that you're not giving her the chance to explain."
"Roy has the documents."
Another silence.
Longer.
"Roy," my mother said, "has always taken Claire's side."
Nathan looked at me.
I looked back at him.
"Roy is a property attorney who read a purchase agreement," Nathan said.
"There are no sides in a document, Mom."
"I just think," my mother said, "that before you do anything irreversible, you should sit down with Madison privately.
Without Claire involved.
Claire has never wanted this marriage to work."
"Claire's son is the reason I found out at all."
"Ethan is nine years old.
He misheard—"
"He didn't mishear.
I saw the phone.
I saw the filing.
I spoke to Roy." Nathan's voice stayed level.
"And I need you to hear me clearly.
If you call Madison again to discuss my legal situation, I will stop discussing it with you entirely."
The line was quiet for a long time.
"I see," my mother said.
"Good night, Mom."
He ended the call.
Ethan picked his pencil back up.
"She's on Madison's side," he said, not looking up from his workbook.
"Yes," Nathan said.
"Why?"
Nathan was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know."
But I thought I did.
I thought about the way my mother had lifted her wineglass at the wedding.
The way the microphone joke had landed too perfectly, too quickly, like a line that had been rehearsed.
The way she had nodded when Madison pointed at me.
She said she had texts.
May you like
I didn't want to think it.
But I was already thinking it.
