Chapter 8: Anna's Company
I sat in the parking garage for twenty minutes.
Anna had a company.
A property management LLC, registered eight months ago — five months before Daniel had suggested hiring her.
Five months before he'd said, *she worked for my brother, we can trust her.*
The transfers into our joint account came from that company.
Anna had been moving money into our account.
Not Daniel.
Anna.
I called Patricia from the car.
"The LLC," I said.
"The one the transfers came from.
It's registered to Anna Reyes.
The nanny."
A pause.
"You're certain?"
"Public records.
I'm looking at it right now."
"Send me the link." Another pause.
"Rachel, this changes the picture considerably.
If Anna controls the source account, and the funds were moved into your joint account, the question becomes what Daniel and Anna were trying to establish and why."
"If they're planning to be together," I said slowly, "and they move her money into our marital account, then claim it as shared assets in a settlement—"
"Then those funds could potentially be positioned as resources Daniel is entitled to in the division.
It's not a clean strategy.
But it's a strategy." Patricia's voice was careful.
"It also means Anna isn't just the other woman in this situation.
She's an active participant in the financial structure."
I thought about Anna standing in my kitchen with her eyes on the floor.
The careful silence.
The way she'd said *I told Daniel from the beginning that you should know.* The performance of reluctance.
"She played me," I said.
"It appears so."
"She played all of us.
Marcus too.
He thought she was scared.
He thought Daniel was the one calling the shots."
"People show different faces to different people," Patricia said.
"It's often how these arrangements stay hidden as long as they do."
I drove home.
The house was quiet and too large without Daniel's presence filling the corners of it.
I made tea I didn't drink and sat at the kitchen table where twelve hours ago I'd watched my husband turn toward another woman before answering my question.
My phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number — different from the first one.
*I think we need to talk.
Just the two of us.
—Anna*
I stared at it.
Then I typed back: *When.*
*Tomorrow morning.
There's something Daniel doesn't know I'm going to tell you.*
I set the phone down.
Lily's voice came from my mother's house in my memory — *Daddy's other secret.
The lady who calls on the phone.* And then Anna, in the kitchen: *I told Daniel from the beginning that you should know.*
Two versions of Anna.
One for Daniel.
One for me.
Possibly a third I hadn't seen yet.
I didn't sleep well.
But I was at the coffee shop Anna named by eight the next morning, ten minutes early, at a table near the back where I could see the door.
She came in at eight exactly.
No makeup.
Hair pulled back.
She looked younger without the careful warmth she wore in my house, and also more tired, and also — I noticed this and filed it — frightened.
She sat down.
Didn't order anything.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"You said there was something Daniel doesn't know you're telling me."
"Yes."
"Then tell me."
She folded her hands on the table.
Looked at them.
"The baby isn't Daniel's," she said.
The coffee shop noise continued around us.
Someone laughed at the counter.
A machine steamed milk.
"Then whose is it?"
May you like
She looked up.
"Marcus's," she said.
