Chapter 5: Before He Writes His Own Version
I picked the kids up from school myself that afternoon.
That was not unusual.
What was unusual was that I took them directly to my sister Paula's house instead of home.
Paula met me at the door.
I had called her from the parking lot of Diane's office.
She hadn't asked questions.
She had just said, "Come."
"How long do you need?" she asked, taking my daughter's backpack.
"Two days.
Maybe three."
She nodded.
No argument.
No drama.
She took both kids inside and I heard her telling them something about a surprise sleepover and homemade pizza.
I drove to Wendy's house alone.
She lived twelve minutes from us, in the same neighborhood she had raised Luca in.
I had driven that route so many times I could do it without thinking.
I sat in her driveway for a moment before I got out.
The lights were on in the kitchen.
She was home.
She opened the door before I knocked.
"I've been waiting," she said.
I stepped inside.
The house smelled like coffee and the faint cedar of her closet, a smell I had known for ten years.
She led me to the kitchen table without a word and set a cup in front of me.
We sat across from each other.
"Tell me," she said.
"The woman at the motel," I said.
"I know who she was."
Wendy's hands were flat on the table.
She didn't move them.
"I pulled you out because of your blood pressure," I said.
"Not because I was protecting her.
I want you to understand that."
"Who was it, Jessi."
I held her gaze.
"Chloe."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Wendy's face did not collapse the way I had feared.
It went still instead.
A different kind of terrible.
"Marcus's Chloe," she said.
Not a question.
"Yes."
She stood up and walked to the window.
She stood there with her back to me, looking out at her own yard.
"How long?" she asked.
The same question I had asked Marcus.
"Eight months.
Possibly longer."
Her shoulders rose and fell once.
"She was at Christmas dinner," Wendy said.
"She sat right there." She pointed at the chair to my left without turning around.
"She helped me wash the dishes."
I didn't say anything.
"She called me Aunt Wendy." Her voice was flat and precise, like she was reading from a document.
"She has called me Aunt Wendy since she was fourteen years old."
"I know."
Wendy turned around.
Her eyes were dry but her face had aged in the last thirty seconds.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I've already started," I said.
"I saw a lawyer this morning.
The accounts are being frozen today."
Something shifted in her expression.
Not surprise.
Something closer to recognition.
"Good," she said.
"Wendy, there's more." I told her about the apartment.
About the loan.
About the text thread.
About what Luca had written to Chloe: *Try it and see what happens to your father's business.*
With each piece, Wendy sat back down.
Slowly, like someone lowering themselves into cold water.
When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
"He used Marcus," she said.
"Yes."
"His own uncle."
"Yes."
She looked at her coffee cup.
"My son did all of this."
I didn't answer.
There was nothing to add.
"Jessi." She looked up.
"I want you to know something.
Whatever happens — whatever you decide — I am on your side.
Not his.
Yours." Her voice didn't waver.
"You are the mother of my grandchildren.
You have been a better daughter to me than he has been a son.
That does not change today."
My throat tightened for the first time since the laundry room.
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
"Thank you," I managed.
Wendy reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
Then her phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
Her expression hardened into something I had never seen on her face before.
"It's Luca," she said.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
She pressed decline and set the phone face-down on the table.
May you like
"Let him wait," she said.
But thirty seconds later, my phone rang too.
