Chapter 5 - The Letter That Never Arrived
"That clip is out of context," Sloane said.
Ethan held the phone up. "Give me the context."
"He was hysterical. I was exhausted. Anyone can lose patience."
"Losing patience is shouting," Isabel said. "This is frightening a child on purpose."
Officer Raines asked everyone to stop talking. He wanted the original video, not arguments over a copy. While Dennis secured the cloud records, Raines contacted child protective services to arrange a specialist interview for Caleb.
"Nobody is asking him to tell the story ten times," Raines said. "That can make a difficult situation worse."
Isabel nodded with painful gratitude. Somebody, finally, was treating her son like a person instead of evidence.
Because of the active no-contact order, Raines explained, Isabel could not simply remain in the house. Ethan asked to speak with his attorney before she left. The officer allowed a brief conversation within sight of everyone.
"I should have called you myself," Ethan said.
"Yes."
"I should have gone to the jail."
"Yes."
There was no comfort in agreeing.
He rubbed a hand over his face. "I thought you took the foundation's money. I saw the documents. And when Sloane told me you wanted Caleb to forget you—"
"I would never want that."
"I know. I think I knew it then."
"Then why did you let him believe I left?"
Ethan looked at Caleb, who was drawing three tiny circles on Isabel's palm. "Because admitting I'd been wrong meant admitting I'd failed both of you."
Isabel didn't answer. He had named the cowardice, but naming it wasn't repairing it.
Dennis brought Ethan an envelope recovered from the locked bottom drawer of his home-office desk. It had arrived ten months earlier, been signed for by a household representative, and never opened.
On the front, in handwriting Ethan knew better than his own, were four words: FOR ETHAN, ABOUT CALEB.
Sloane stared at it.
"Where did that come from?"
"My drawer," Ethan said. "Why are you frightened of a letter?"
He tore it open. Inside was a note from Isabel, written in the county jail's cramped visitation room. She described the missing transfer records, begged him to request Caleb's school attendance logs, and ended with a simple plea: Please don't tell him I stopped loving him.
Ethan's shoulders began to shake.
Sloane said, "You have no idea what she put us through."
"I know exactly what I put her through," Ethan said. "I'm still learning what you did."
His attorney arrived by phone. After hearing the situation, she asked a question that changed the room.
"Ethan, who signed the affidavit claiming Isabel had confessed to taking the money?"
May you like
He looked at the copy in his case file.
At the bottom, above the notarized seal, was his own signature.
