Chapter 6: What Was Found in the Bedroom
Victoria was upstairs for forty minutes.
Gerald Foss sat in the armchair she had vacated and made calls in a low voice, turned slightly away from the room.
Dr.
Hale reviewed her folder.
Mark stood at the window with his back to all of us, watching the garden go dark.
I gave Thomas his dinner at the kitchen table — the small routine of it, the plastic bowl with the divided sections, the spoon he insisted on holding himself even though half of everything ended up on the tray.
He was calmer than I had seen him in weeks.
Children feel when a pressure has lifted, even if they can't name it.
"More," he said, pointing at the bowl.
"There is no more," I said.
"That was all of it."
He considered this seriously.
Then he pointed at my sleeve instead.
"Lena," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Still here."
He patted my arm once, twice, with his open palm.
The way he did when he was reassuring himself.
I was washing the bowl when Mark appeared in the kitchen doorway.
"She's taking longer than I expected," he said.
"Do you want me to check on her?"
He shook his head.
Then, after a moment: "Elena.
The folder.
The recordings." He stopped.
"Why didn't you come to me directly?"
I set the bowl in the drying rack.
"I tried.
Twice."
"I know.
You said that." He leaned against the doorframe.
"I mean before that.
Weeks before."
I turned to face him.
"Because the first time I saw something that worried me, I told myself I was overreacting.
I was new.
She was your wife.
I thought — maybe this is how she is with him and he's fine, maybe I'm reading it wrong." I paused.
"The second time I knew I wasn't reading it wrong.
But I also knew that if I came to you with nothing but my word against hers, I would be gone within a week and Thomas would still be here."
Mark was quiet for a moment.
"You were right," he said.
"I'm sorry you were right."
Thomas banged his spoon on the tray.
Mark crossed the kitchen, lifted his son out of the high chair, and held him against his chest.
Thomas grabbed a fistful of his father's shirt and held on.
"I'm going to fix this," Mark said.
He was speaking to Thomas, not to me.
"I promise you.
I'm going to fix this."
Thomas patted his father's chest with the same open palm.
Reassuring him back.
It was Gerald Foss who found it.
He had gone upstairs to advise Victoria on what she could and could not take with her, and he came back down twelve minutes later with his briefcase held differently — tighter, closer to his body — and a look on his face that was not the careful professional expression he had been wearing all evening.
He asked to speak to Mark privately.
Mark said no.
Gerald Foss set his briefcase on the coffee table and opened it.
He removed a small notebook — spiral-bound, the kind you find in any office supply store — and set it on top of Dr.
Hale's folder.
"I found this in the bedroom," he said.
"In the drawer of her nightstand.
I want to be transparent that I found it, and I want to be equally transparent that I read enough of it to understand that I cannot in good conscience withhold it."
Mark looked at the notebook.
"What is it?"
"It appears to be a personal record," Gerald Foss said.
"Kept by my client." He cleared his throat.
"Going back approximately fourteen months."
Dr.
Hale reached for it.
"May I?" she asked Gerald Foss.
He nodded.
She opened it to a marked page near the middle and read in silence for a moment.
Then she looked up at Mark.
"You should read this," she said.
"I'll step out if you'd like."
"Stay," Mark said.
She turned the notebook toward him.
I didn't read it.
I was across the room with Thomas, and I couldn't see the pages.
But I watched Mark's face as he read.
I watched the color leave it.
I watched his hand come up and press flat against the page, as if he needed to stop the words from moving.
He read for a long time.
When he set the notebook down, he didn't speak immediately.
Gerald Foss said, very quietly: "I think my client requires a different kind of counsel than I'm able to provide."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
Dr.
Hale answered.
"It means what's in that notebook goes beyond a custody matter." She looked at Mark.
"There are entries describing deliberate actions.
Planned.
Documented by her own hand." She paused.
"She was keeping score."
Thomas had fallen asleep again against Mark's shoulder.
Mark looked at the notebook on the table.
He looked at it the way you look at something you cannot put back.
"What do I do?" he asked.
Not to Gerald Foss.
Not to Dr.
Hale.
To me.
I looked at him.
At Thomas sleeping against him.
At the notebook on the table.
"You call someone who isn't her attorney," I said.
"Tonight.
Before she comes back downstairs."
He nodded once.
He took his phone from his pocket.
Upstairs, Victoria's footsteps crossed the ceiling again.
May you like
Moving toward the staircase now.
Mark dialed.
