Chapter 9: Robert Alone
She called Robert that evening.
Not a message this time.
A call.
He answered on the first ring.
He had been waiting.
"I've seen Schell's emails," she said.
Silence.
"I've seen your first email to him.
I've seen what he told you to say.
I've seen all of it."
"Mom —"
"I'm not calling to argue.
I'm calling because before Paul files anything, I want to hear from you directly.
Not a version.
Not an explanation.
I want to know why you wrote that first email."
A long pause.
When Robert spoke, his voice was different from any version she had heard in the past two weeks.
The defensiveness was gone.
What was left was smaller and more honest.
"We were in trouble," he said.
"Financially.
We'd overextended on the house, on the kids' schools.
Megan had been pushing for years to do something about it, and I kept saying we'd figure it out.
And then one night I sat down and actually looked at the numbers and I couldn't see a way through." He stopped.
"And I thought about the cottage.
And I thought — it's just sitting there.
And someday it'll be mine anyway.
And I just —"
"You decided not to wait."
"I told myself I was just exploring.
That I wasn't doing anything wrong.
That it was just information."
"And when Schell told you to hide the fact that I was alive?"
Robert was quiet for a long time.
"I knew it was wrong.
I knew it the moment I read it.
And I did it anyway."
She didn't respond immediately.
"I'm sorry, Mom." His voice broke on the last word.
"I know that doesn't fix anything.
I know it doesn't come close.
But I need you to know that I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway and I have to live with that."
She looked out at the sunroom.
The evening light was coming through the glass at a low angle, the way it did in September.
"You will return the fifteen thousand dollars," she said.
"To me, not to Paul's office.
A check, with a note.
I don't need the note to say anything in particular.
I just need it to exist."
"Yes."
"You will have no access to this property without an explicit invitation from me.
Not the lockbox.
Not a key.
Nothing."
"Yes."
"And you will not contact Warren Schell again.
About anything."
"I won't."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Robert.
Did you ever think about what your father would have thought of this?"
The silence that followed was the longest of the conversation.
"Every day," he said.
"Since the moment I sent that first email."
She believed him.
That was the hardest part — she believed him completely.
"I love you," she said.
"That is not in question.
But love is not the same as trust, and trust is not the same as access, and access is not the same as ownership.
Your father understood all three of those things.
You will have to learn them."
She ended the call.
She sat in the sunroom until it was fully dark.
She didn't turn on a light.
May you like
She just sat in the dark in the room Henry had built, and she let herself feel everything she had been holding carefully in place for two weeks — the grief of it, the loss of something she hadn't known she still had, the exhaustion of being right when she had so desperately wanted to be wrong.
Then she got up, turned on the kitchen light, and made herself dinner.
