Chapter 9: What Arya Said
Arya did not fight.
I had expected her to fight.
She had the instincts for it — the quick repositioning, the emotional reframing, the ability to make herself the injured party in any room she entered.
I had watched her do it for three years.
I had admired it, once.
She came to me the morning after Dominic left, before Carver arrived with the papers.
She was not wearing makeup.
That was the first thing I noticed.
In three years, I had never seen Arya without makeup before noon.
She sat in the chair across from me in the sitting room, and she folded her hands in her lap, and she looked at me with an expression I hadn't seen on her face before.
Not guilt.
Not fear.
Something quieter than either.
"How long did you know?" she asked.
"About the documents?
Six days." I looked at her.
"About what you were?
Longer than that."
She absorbed this.
"I didn't know about the shooting," she said.
"I want you to know that."
"I believe you."
She looked up.
She hadn't expected that.
"Dominic told me it was an opportunity," she said.
"He said you were going to be incapacitated for a long time, maybe permanently, and that if we didn't act, the businesses would be taken over by creditors or rivals.
He said he was protecting the estate." She paused.
"He said protecting the estate meant protecting me."
"And you believed him."
"I wanted to believe him." She looked at her hands.
"There's a difference."
"Yes," I said.
"There is."
"I signed the documents," she said.
"I knew the signature on the postnuptial wasn't yours.
I told myself it was a formality.
That you would have signed it anyway if you'd been asked." She stopped.
"That's not a defense."
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
She was quiet for a moment.
"What happens to me?" she said.
"That depends on Carver and the prosecutor," I said.
"You signed a fraudulent document.
You were party to a conspiracy to have me declared legally incapacitated.
Those are facts." I looked at her.
"Whether you cooperate will matter."
"I'll cooperate," she said immediately.
"I know you will."
She looked at me — really looked, the way she hadn't in months, maybe longer.
"Were you ever going to marry me?" she asked.
"Before all of this.
Was it real?"
It was a harder question than anything Dominic had said to me the night before.
"I thought it was," I said.
"I think you thought it was too.
For a while."
"For a while," she repeated.
"Yes."
She stood.
She smoothed the front of her dress — a habit, something to do with her hands.
"The dress fitting," she said.
"The morning Tessa found the document.
I actually did have a dress fitting."
"I know."
"I kept going to them.
Every week.
I kept thinking—" She stopped.
"I don't know what I kept thinking."
She walked to the door.
She stopped with her hand on the frame.
"She's good for you," Arya said.
Not bitterly.
Not generously.
Just as a fact, stated and left in the room.
"She's my caregiver," I said.
Arya almost smiled.
"Vincent," she said.
"I've watched that woman argue with you about medication schedules and call your physical therapist behind my back and sit in a chair next to you in a lawyer's office without being asked." She looked at me one last time.
"She's not your caregiver."
She left.
The front door closed a second time.
I sat in the quiet of the sitting room for a long moment.
Then I went to find Tessa.
She was in the kitchen, washing a single cup, her back to the door.
She had been in the house since seven.
She had heard Arya arrive.
She had stayed out of the room.
"She's gone," I said.
Tessa turned off the water.
"How are you?" she asked.
"I don't know yet." I moved into the kitchen.
"She said she didn't know about the shooting."
"Do you believe her?"
"Yes." I stopped near the table.
"She's not capable of that.
She's capable of a lot of things, but not that."
Tessa dried her hands.
"Carver called," she said.
"Dominic's attorney contacted him this morning.
He'll sign the agreement."
"Good."
"The fraud filing goes in at noon." She set the dish towel down.
"Carver said the prosecutor's office has already been briefed.
They're moving quickly."
"They usually do when there's a recording."
She almost smiled at that.
"Tessa," I said.
"Yes."
"Arya said something before she left."
She waited.
"She said you're not my caregiver."
Tessa looked at the dish towel on the counter.
"She's not wrong," she said carefully.
"After today, technically—"
"That's not what I mean."
She looked up.
I had spent six months learning how to ask for help with things I used to do alone.
It turned out that was the easier kind of asking.
"I don't want you to leave," I said.
"Not because I need a caregiver.
Because I don't want you to leave."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"I have terrible hours," she said.
"I know."
"My sister calls at odd times and I always answer."
"I know."
"I argue about medication schedules."
"I've noticed."
"And I'm going to keep expecting you to participate," she said.
"In everything.
That doesn't stop."
"I'm counting on it," I said.
She picked up the dish towel again, then set it back down, then left it.
"Okay," she said.
May you like
Just that.
Okay.
