Chapter 5 - “I think he realized he was losing control of everything.”
“That sounds more believable.”
“The company. The investment. You. Himself.”
The server approached.
Neither of us ordered anything except coffee.
When she left, Victoria pushed the folder toward me.
“These are copies of everything I saw.”
“Why give them to me now?”
“Because you should have had them before.”
I did not touch the folder.
“Did you sign anything?”
“No.”
“Did you alter anything?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
I believed her.
Or perhaps I believed that she believed herself.
For the moment, that was enough.
When the meeting ended, Victoria stood.
“So that’s it?”
I asked.
“There is one more thing.”
Of course there was.
She reached into her bag again, but this time she removed no document.
“Don’t assume Nathan knew the signature wasn’t yours.”
I stared at her.
“You just spent an hour telling me he was defensive about it.”
“He was defensive about everything. That’s one reason we…” She stopped. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Finish.”
“One reason we became close was because he talked constantly when he was with me. About work. About failing. About disappointing people.”
“And me?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Victoria looked almost apologetic.
“That you were the person whose disappointment scared him most.”
I looked away.
“I’m not asking you to feel sorry for him.”
“Good.”
“But when he saw that consent form, he genuinely seemed to think you had signed it.”
“Who else would have?”
“I don’t know.”
We left separately.
I sat in my car for ten minutes before calling Rebecca.
By Thursday, the mystery had become less sinister and more embarrassing.
Which, Rebecca told me, was often the nature of business problems.
The company’s previous outside counsel had prepared consent documents for the restructuring.
Nathan’s chief financial officer, Martin Wells, believed an earlier authorization allowed him to execute routine member consents on my behalf.
The signature had not been a deliberate attempt to imitate mine.
It was a scanned signature image from an old tax document inserted by an administrative assistant who assumed the authorization covered it.
It did not.
No secret criminal conspiracy.
No plot to steal my company share.
Just a chain of assumptions, poor oversight, and one important person—me—whom everyone had become accustomed to leaving out.
When Rebecca explained it, I felt almost disappointed.
Not because I wanted something worse.
Because a dramatic betrayal would have been easier to hate.
Ordinary neglect was harder.
Nathan had not plotted to erase me.
He had simply allowed a system to develop in which nobody thought they needed to ask me.
Including him.
Especially him.
The investment deal was paused.
My ownership remained intact.
Nathan instructed the company to provide me with every member report and financial statement I should have received over the years.
Then, without being asked, he scheduled an independent review of the restructuring.
He sent me one message afterward.
I know fixing paperwork doesn’t fix us. I’m doing it because it should have been done correctly the first time.
I read it twice.
Then put my phone away.
The Savannah project began the following Monday.
For the first time in years, I packed a suitcase for work without arranging my schedule around Nathan.
The drive south along Highway 17 felt strangely expansive.
Marsh grass stretched toward the horizon.
The late-summer sky was pale blue, and egrets stood motionless in roadside shallows.
I turned off the radio halfway there.
Silence no longer felt like loneliness.
The Mercer property stood beneath enormous live oaks outside Savannah, its faded stucco walls warmed by afternoon sun.
I spent three days measuring window openings, reviewing plaster samples, arguing cheerfully with a contractor about salvaged brick, and eating dinner alone at a small restaurant where nobody knew whose wife I was.
On Wednesday night, Marianne called.
“How does it feel?”
“What?”
“To be annoying about cornices again.”
I smiled.
“Wonderful.”
“I knew it.”
“Don’t become unbearable.”
“Too late.”
Before hanging up, she said, “Clara?”
“Yes?”
“You’re good at this.”
I stared at my notes spread across the hotel desk.
“I know.”
The words came naturally.
That was new.
When I returned to Charleston Thursday evening, I did not go to Evelyn’s house first.
I went home.
Nathan was in the backyard watering herbs.
For five years he had insisted he could grow basil.
For five years the basil had disagreed.
He turned when he heard the gate.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
His eyes went to my overnight bag.
“How was Savannah?”
“Good.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Something moved across his face.
Pride, perhaps.
And sadness.
“I’m glad.”
I set my bag near the back door.
“We need to talk.”
He turned off the hose.
We sat on the porch.
Not at the kitchen table.
I had begun to hate that table.
For a minute, neither of us spoke.
Then Nathan said, “I met with a therapist.”
That surprised me.
“When?”
“Tuesday.”
“Why?”
He almost smiled.
“You’re really going to make me answer that?”
“Yes.”
“Because apparently my preferred method of dealing with fear is to make increasingly terrible decisions while insisting everything is under control.”
A small laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Nathan looked at me.
I covered my mouth.
“That wasn’t funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
His smile disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
“I’m sorry, Clara.”
I looked toward the yard.
“You’ve said that.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what to do with it yet.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
That was different.
Old Nathan would have wanted a plan.
A timeline.
A way to measure whether his apology was working.
“I met Victoria,” I said.
His expression changed.
“She told me.”
“You spoke to her?”
“She emailed the company after.”
“About what?”
“The documents.”
I nodded.
“She told me you ended things three weeks before our anniversary.”
Nathan rubbed his hands over his knees.
“Yes.”
“Why did you let me believe it was still happening?”
He stared at the ground.
“Because when you asked how long, I said eight months. Then everything happened so fast.”
“You could have corrected me.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He took a long breath.
“Because saying I had ended it sounded like I was asking for credit.”
I considered that.
“Were you?”
“Part of me probably wanted it.”
There was painful honesty in the answer.
“And why did you end it?”
Nathan looked at me.
“Because I missed you.”
I hated how quickly tears came to my eyes.
He noticed.
“I know that isn’t enough.”
“No.”
“And I know it sounds ridiculous considering what I was doing.”
“Yes.”
“But I did.”
I wiped beneath one eye.
“Then why did you tell me you wished I wasn’t your wife?”
His face folded with regret.
“That sentence has been in my head every hour since I said it.”
“It’s been in mine too.”
“I know.”
“No, Nathan. You don’t.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
I waited.
Finally he said, “I think what I meant was that I wished I didn’t have to face what I had done to you.”
The porch became very quiet.
He continued.
“If you weren’t my wife, then I wasn’t a husband betraying you. I was just some man who made bad choices.”
I looked at him.
“That’s an impressive amount of selfishness.”
“Yes.”
“At least you know.”
“I’m starting to.”
He leaned forward.
“I was sitting across from you, and you were asking me to tell the truth. I knew the affair was over, but I also knew ending it didn’t undo anything. I knew I still hadn’t told you about the investment problem. I knew you were going to see me differently.”
“So you rejected me first.”
His eyes lifted.
“Yes.”
There it was.
A truth small enough to be believable.
And ugly enough to matter.
Not that he had stopped loving me.
Not that our entire marriage had been a lie.
He had been ashamed and afraid, and instead of trusting me with that fear, he had tried to outrun it.
For a year.
Perhaps longer.
I looked at the house.
“Do you remember the first time we talked about buying this place?”
Nathan smiled faintly.
“You said the upstairs bathroom looked haunted.”
“It did.”
“You refused to go in alone.”
“The wallpaper had swans.”
“They were aggressive swans.”
I laughed.
Then cried.
Nathan did not move toward me.
I appreciated that.
“I don’t know if I can stay married to you,” I said.
His eyes closed briefly.
“I know.”
“I need you to understand that.”
“I do.”
“And I don’t want you spending the next six months trying to convince me.”
His brow tightened.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Figure out who you are when convincing me isn’t the goal.”
He looked at me for a long time.
Then nodded.
“Okay.”
I moved into a furnished apartment downtown the following week.
Not because Rebecca told me to.
Not because Evelyn insisted.
Because I wanted a front door that belonged only to me.
The apartment was small.
One bedroom.
Tiny kitchen.
A balcony barely wide enough for two chairs.
I loved it.
I bought yellow towels Nathan would have hated.
I hung three framed prints without measuring the distance between them.
One was slightly crooked.
I left it that way.
Nathan and I began marriage counseling in October.
May you like
Not reconciliation counseling.
That distinction was mine.
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