Chapter 5: The Name on the Screen
The name was Renata.
No last name.
Just Renata, with a small heart beside it.
I looked at the screen.
I looked at Daniel.
He had gone very still, the way people go still when they are calculating how much you already know.
"Who is Renata?" I said.
"Give me the phone."
"Who is she?"
"She's a colleague.
Give me the phone, please."
The call rang out.
The screen went dark.
Marcus had stopped moving in the kitchen.
Noah was still eating, head down, focused on his banana slices.
"A colleague," I said.
"Yes."
"With a heart."
Daniel said nothing.
"How long?" I asked.
"It's not what you're —"
"How long, Daniel?"
He looked at the table.
"It's complicated."
Something settled in my chest.
Not the sharp breaking feeling from earlier in the evening.
Something quieter.
Something that had been waiting a long time to be confirmed and had finally arrived.
"How long?" I asked one more time.
"Two years," he said.
Quietly.
Almost to himself.
As if saying it out loud made it smaller somehow.
Two years.
Noah was four.
I did the math without meaning to, and the math was ugly.
"Was she the reason your mother called Noah illegitimate?" I asked.
Daniel's head came up.
"No.
That was — my mother has always —"
"Was she the reason?"
He closed his eyes.
"My mother found out about Renata eight months ago.
She decided that if the marriage ended, the house needed to come back to the family.
The paternity challenge was her idea of — of securing that outcome."
"So your mother's legal strategy," I said slowly, "was built on the assumption that you would leave me.
For her."
He didn't answer.
"And you signed it," I said.
"Knowing that.
You signed a document challenging your own son's paternity so that when you left, you wouldn't leave empty-handed."
"I didn't think it would go this far."
"You signed it."
"My mother —"
"You are forty-one years old." My voice did not rise.
I made sure of that.
"You signed it.
Not your mother.
You."
Marcus walked out of the kitchen and stood in the doorway.
He looked at his brother for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
"I'm going to take Noah to the other room," he said.
"There are some toys in the bag by the couch.
Is that all right?"
I nodded.
"Come on, buddy," Marcus said.
"Let's go find something to build."
Noah took the last piece of bread with him, trustingly, following his uncle out of the room without looking back.
When they were gone, I opened the folder again.
I found the page I was looking for and set it on the table.
"This is a record of the joint account," I said.
"The one your mother told me was frozen pending the legal review.
I had my attorney pull the transaction history last Thursday."
Daniel looked at the page.
"Fourteen transfers," I said.
"Over twenty-two months.
Each one between three and eight thousand dollars.
All going to the same account."
He didn't touch the paper.
"I had the account traced," I said.
"It belongs to Renata."
The silence in the room was total.
"You were paying her," I said.
"From our joint account.
While your mother was filing legal papers to take my house.
While your son was growing up in this home.
You were transferring money from our shared finances to another woman.
For almost two years."
Daniel put both hands flat on the table.
"I was going to tell you," he said.
"When?"
He didn't answer.
"When the house was gone?" I said.
"When the paternity challenge had done enough damage?
When there was nothing left for me to walk away with?"
"It wasn't like that."
"Then tell me what it was like."
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"I was unhappy," he said finally.
"I know that's not enough.
I know it doesn't justify any of it.
But I was unhappy and I didn't know how to say it and Renata was —"
"Don't," I said.
"Do not tell me what she was."
He stopped.
I closed the folder.
"I'm going to ask you one question," I said.
"And I need you to answer it honestly.
Not for me.
For Noah."
He waited.
"Is there anything else I don't know?" I asked.
"Anything else in your mother's legal strategy, in your finances, in this situation — anything at all — that is going to come out later and be worse than what I already know?"
May you like
He was quiet for a long time.
"There may be one more thing," he said.
