Chapter 8 - The Investigator
Mom didn’t deny it.
That hit me harder than I expected.
“You hired someone?” I asked.
She looked at her hands. “Yes.”
Dad said, “Eleanor?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“When I knew whether I was wrong.”
Lauren gave a bitter laugh. “There. Your sweet mother had me followed.”
I asked Mom why.
She took a breath. “Because I saw Lauren leaving a hotel with a man two months ago.”
My chest tightened.
Lauren’s voice rose. “It was a business meeting.”
“At eleven-thirty at night?” Mom asked.
Vivian snapped, “Successful people work late.”
Dad ignored her. “Who was the man?”
Mom reached into her purse.
She pulled out a small envelope.
Inside were photographs.
I didn’t want to look.
I looked anyway.
Lauren outside the Hartwell Hotel.
Lauren getting into a black SUV.
Lauren standing close to a man I knew.
Peter Sloane.
My college roommate.
My best man.
The man who had disappeared from the ceremony twenty minutes earlier because, according to a groomsman, he was “taking a call.”
I looked toward the row where he had been standing.
Empty.
Lauren said, “Daniel, it isn’t what you think.”
I laughed once. “You’ve used that sentence a lot today.”
“He was helping me with the loan structure.”
“Peter is a surgeon.”
Silence.
Dad looked toward the mansion.
“Where is he?”
One of my groomsmen, Aaron, spoke from behind us. “I saw him go inside after the fall.”
Lauren went pale.
I started toward the mansion.
She blocked me.
“Don’t do this here.”
I looked past her at my mother’s dirty dress, the frozen guests, the screen still showing financial records.
“Where would you prefer?”
She whispered, “Please.”
That almost stopped me.
Then Aaron ran up from behind.
“Daniel.”
He was holding a phone.
“Peter left this in the groom’s room.”
The screen lit with a new message.
From Lauren.
It read:
For the first time, Dad asked Mom whether she wanted to stop.
"We can take this inside," he said. "We can send everyone home."
Mom looked at Lauren and then at me. "If we stop now, Daniel will spend the next ten years wondering which parts were true. Finish it."
I felt ashamed that she knew me so well. She was right. If Dad had shown me only half the evidence, I would have spent months inventing explanations for the rest. Love is very good at manufacturing reasonable doubt when you are desperate to keep it alive.
Lauren heard her too.
"You enjoy this, don’t you?" she asked Mom.
Mom’s expression barely changed. "No. I wanted to dance with my son tonight. I wanted to welcome you into this family. I bought the blue dress because you said it matched your flowers. Do not confuse surviving your cruelty with enjoying it."
May you like
Lauren had no answer.
Get the second phone before Daniel finds it.
