Chapter 2
Important documents.
Mom arrived with two suitcases of her own because she planned to stay with me at her house until I was stronger.
Vincent stood at the foot of the stairs.
“You’re taking him?”
I almost responded sharply.
Instead I looked at him.
“I’m taking our newborn son with me while I recover at my mother’s house.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer hurt him.
I saw it.
Strangely, I didn’t enjoy that.
I had imagined that leaving would feel like victory.
It didn’t.
It felt like carrying something heavy out of a burning room while still mourning everything inside.
Vincent helped Mom put the bags into her car.
Before I climbed into the passenger seat, he touched the roof above the door.
“Claire.”
I looked at him.
“I love you.”
I believed he meant it.
That was the problem.
“You don’t know how to make me feel safe inside that love.”
He looked as though I had struck him.
I closed the door.
Four days later, Vincent returned from what Mom later called “one of his mysterious disappearances” carrying two dozen roses.
Our nanny, Rosa, whom Mom had hired temporarily to help at the house, was there picking up the rest of Lucas’s things.
She told him I had left.
By then, Lucas and I were settled into my childhood bedroom.
Mom had turned Dad’s old office into a nursery.
There were yellow curtains and a secondhand rocking chair and a wooden crib Mom’s neighbor had given us.
For the first time in weeks, I slept for nearly four uninterrupted hours.
When I woke, my phone showed eleven missed calls from Vincent.
I didn’t return them.
Instead, I called Eleanor.
Over the next week, she helped me gather documents.
What we found confused even her.
The refinance had released nearly four hundred thousand dollars in equity.
But the money hadn’t gone into one of Vincent’s companies.
It had gone into an account connected to something called Marlowe Community Development LLC.
“Do you recognize that name?”
Eleanor asked.
“No.”
“Vincent is listed as one of three authorized representatives.”
“Who are the others?”
“One is an accountant named Peter Walsh.”
“And the third?”
Eleanor hesitated.
“A woman named Rebecca Marlowe.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Yet the moment Eleanor said it, I remembered the perfume.
Sweet.
Floral.
Expensive.
“Can you find out who she is?”
“I can find public information.”
An hour later, Eleanor called again.
Rebecca Marlowe was forty-two.
Widowed.
Founder of a nonprofit housing organization on Chicago’s South Side.
She ran transitional apartments for families rebuilding their lives after financial hardship.
Nothing about her profile looked remotely like the glamorous mistress I had imagined.
There were photographs of her beside renovated brick buildings, holding oversized scissors at ribbon cuttings.
In one picture, Vincent stood several feet behind her.
I enlarged the photograph.
He looked serious.
Professional.
Ordinary.
My certainty began to wobble.
Then Eleanor sent one more document.
A corporate filing.
Marlowe Community Development had purchased an apartment building eleven months earlier.
Vincent had personally guaranteed part of the financing.
Three months later, the project had nearly collapsed.
“That could explain the refinance,” Eleanor said.
“It does not explain why your signature appears on it.”
“Or why he left me.”
“No.”
That remained.
Two days later, Rebecca Marlowe called me.
I nearly ignored the unknown number.
“Mrs.
Carter?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Rebecca Marlowe.”
My whole body went still.
“I know who you are.”
There was a pause.
“I imagined you might.”
“Why are you calling?”
“Because Vincent told me not to.”
That surprised me.
Rebecca sighed.
“And because I think that was a mistake.”
I walked into Mom’s kitchen and closed the door.
“What happened the night my son was born?”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
“Something went wrong at one of our properties.”
“With the building?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A financial problem.
And a family living there suddenly had nowhere else to go.
Vincent came because he believed he could fix it.”
I gripped the phone.
“He left his wife in labor because of an apartment problem?”
Rebecca’s voice softened.
“That isn’t the entire story.”
“Then tell me the entire story.”
“I think Vincent needs to.”
“He had fifteen days.”
“I know.”
Anger rose inside me.
“Were you with him?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“Is that why he smelled like your perfume?”
Rebecca went silent.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed once.
Not mockingly.
Almost sadly.
“Yes.”
I leaned against the counter.
“Were you having an affair with my husband?”
“No.”
The answer came instantly.
“No, Claire.
I have never had any romantic relationship with Vincent.”
I wanted to believe her.
I also didn’t know her.
“Then why would he hide you?”
“He wasn’t hiding me.”
“What was he hiding?”
Rebecca exhaled slowly.
“A promise.”
I frowned.
“What promise?”
“I’m sorry.
That part really does belong to him.”
“I’m tired of people deciding what belongs to me.”
“You’re right.”
Her voice broke slightly.
Then she said something that changed the direction of every question I had been asking.
“Claire, do you know a woman named Margaret Carter?”
“Yes.”
Vincent’s mother.
A woman I had been told died when Vincent was seventeen.
Rebecca was silent.
Then she said carefully, “I think you need to ask your husband why he has been telling you his mother is dead.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What are you talking about?”
“Margaret Carter is alive.”
The kitchen seemed to become impossibly quiet.
May you like
Rebecca continued.
“And the night your son was born, Vincent was with her.”
