Chapter 3 - He had no answer.
“Preston, go.”
“Eliza.”
“I mean it.”
He stood.
There was no anger in him now.
Only exhaustion.
At the door he stopped.
“I’m sorry about your father.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“That he told me something you wish he hadn’t.”
The words were careful.
Too careful.
“What else did he tell you?”
Preston looked back.
“Nothing.”
I knew him well enough to recognize a lie.
Not necessarily a large one.
But a lie.
“You just lied to me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Eliza, not everything your father ever said to me belongs in this conversation.”
“He was my father.”
“And he was also his own person.”
I felt my temper rise.
“What does that mean?”
“It means sometimes he talked to me because he didn’t want to worry you.”
“About what?”
Preston looked toward the study where my mother waited.
Then back at me.
“You should ask Helen.”
He left.
I stood in the open doorway watching him drive away.
My mother appeared behind me several seconds later.
I did not turn around.
“What did Dad tell Preston?” I asked.
Silence.
That was when I knew.
Mom had known there was something else.
I turned.
Her face had changed.
Not guilty exactly.
Worried.
“Eliza,” she said, “come sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
“It isn’t terrible.”
“That is never a reassuring way to begin.”
She sighed.
“Your father was concerned before he died.”
“About Ironvale?”
“No.”
“About Preston?”
“No.”
“Then about what?”
“You.”
I stared at her.
“He thought you were becoming too dependent on being needed.”
“I ran a company.”
“He wasn’t talking about the company.”
Mom walked toward the windows.
“Your father loved your ambition. He bragged about you to complete strangers until it became embarrassing.”
“That sounds like him.”
“But he worried that you had started believing usefulness was the same thing as love.”
I didn’t answer.
“He saw how people relied on you,” she continued. “Employees. Friends. Me. Your board. Preston. And he was afraid you were building a life where nobody could give anything back because you had already taken responsibility for everything.”
“That sounds incredibly unfair.”
“It made me angry too.”
“Then why tell Preston?”
“Because your father thought Preston might be the only person who could convince you to slow down.”
I laughed once.
“That worked beautifully.”
Mom flinched.
I regretted it immediately.
“Sorry.”
“You’re allowed to be angry.”
“I don’t want permission.”
“No.”
She turned toward me.
“There’s something else.”
Of course there was.
My mother walked upstairs with me.
At the safe, she asked me to take out the bundle of letters tied with gray ribbon.
“These?”
“Yes.”
They were mostly old correspondence.
Birthday notes from my parents.
A letter my father wrote when Ironvale received its first major government contract.
One from my college roommate.
Another from a former professor.
I untied the ribbon.
Mom reached beneath several envelopes and pulled out one I had forgotten.
It was addressed in my father’s handwriting.
Not to me.
To Preston.
I looked at my mother.
“Why is this here?”
“Because Preston gave it to me after the funeral.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
The envelope was sealed.
That surprised me more than anything else.
Preston had possessed a letter from my father and apparently never opened it.
“Why would Dad write to him?”
“I don’t know.”
I turned the envelope over.
On the back my father had written one additional line.
Give this to Preston only if Eliza forgets she has a choice.
For several seconds, I could hear only my own breathing.
“What does that mean?”
Mom shook her head.
“I have wondered for four years.”
My phone rang.
Nina.
I answered.
“We have a problem,” she said.
“What kind?”
“The kind we need to understand before we assume anything.”
“What happened?”
“The security team examined the drive.”
“And?”
“It was accessed nine months ago.”
I gripped the phone.
“That’s impossible.”
“The logs are clear.”
“By whom?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Preston?”
“Maybe. But there’s something more important.”
I looked at the unopened letter in my hand.
“What?”
“The drive that’s in your safe isn’t the original drive.”
A chill moved slowly through me.
Nina continued.
“Someone copied the archive, replaced the device, and tried very carefully to make it look untouched.”
I turned toward my mother.
Nine months ago.
Long before I discovered Marissa.
Long before I contacted a divorce attorney.
Long before Preston walked through my front door claiming my life as his own.
For the first time, I wondered whether the affair was not the beginning of what had broken between us.
May you like
Maybe it was simply the easiest part to see.
And in my hand was a sealed letter my father had written to the husband I no longer trusted, containing words no one had read for four years.
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