Chapter 10: What Renata Did When She Knew She Was Losing
She came downstairs that evening with a suitcase.
Not packed to leave — Thomas understood that immediately.
Packed to demonstrate.
The suitcase was a prop, a pressure point, a way of forcing a conversation she wanted to have on her terms.
She set it in the hallway and stood beside it and looked at Thomas where he sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and Paul's most recent email open on his laptop.
"I want to talk," she said.
"Paul Adler," Thomas said.
"All correspondence — "
"I'm not talking about correspondence.
I'm talking about us.
About this." She gestured at the house.
"I have been here for eight months, Thomas.
I have managed this household.
I have been present for your daughter in ways you weren't able to be."
"Don't."
"I'm not trying to be cruel.
I'm stating a fact.
You were grieving.
You needed — "
"You grabbed my daughter hard enough to bruise her arm," Thomas said.
"That's the only fact that matters to me right now."
Renata's jaw tightened.
"She went into my room without permission."
"She's six."
"She was going through my things."
"She found a photograph of you meeting with someone about selling this house." Thomas looked at her steadily.
"My wife's house.
The house where my daughter sleeps."
Something moved across Renata's face — fast, and then gone.
"That meeting was — "
"I don't want to hear what it was." He closed the laptop.
"Paul has filed the welfare assessment response.
The court has the drawing, the photographs, Dolores's statement, and Mrs.
Hargreaves's report.
Gerald Marsh has been notified that the cohabitation document is being challenged on the grounds of undue influence and improper witnessing." He paused.
"You have until Monday to vacate voluntarily.
If you don't, the removal order goes to the court on Tuesday morning."
Renata stared at him.
"You can't — "
"I can.
Paul has confirmed it." He stood up.
"The document you had me sign doesn't give you what you told me it did.
Marsh knew that when he drafted it.
He was counting on me not finding out."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know exactly what I'm talking about.
I've spent three days reading every document in this house." He looked at her.
"You were careful, Renata.
You were very careful.
But you made one mistake."
"What mistake?"
"You underestimated Dolores." He picked up his cup.
"And you underestimated a six-year-old who learned to keep very quiet and pay very close attention."
Renata stood beside her suitcase for a long moment.
The house was quiet around her.
No allies in it.
No leverage left that hadn't already been seen and answered.
When she spoke again, her voice was different.
The composure was still there — she was too practiced to lose it entirely — but underneath it was something thin and exposed.
"I could have been good for her," Renata said.
"For both of you.
I wanted to be."
"Maybe you did," Thomas said.
"But wanting isn't the same as being."
He walked past her to the hallway and looked at the suitcase.
"Pack the rest of your things this weekend," he said.
"I'll arrange for someone to be here Monday morning."
He went upstairs.
He did not look back.
Behind him, Renata stood alone in the hallway with her prop suitcase and her careful notes and her solicitor who had already stopped returning her calls — Paul had seen to that — and the quiet, complete understanding that the house was no longer hers to calculate.
May you like
She picked up the suitcase.
She carried it back upstairs.
