Chapter 4 - Both of Us Will Burn
He sat back down and put his face in his hands.
"So what do you want me to do about it now?" he said, flat, into his palms.
"I want you to tell Ashley."
His head snapped up. "Absolutely not."
"She has a right to know why there's a diamond bracelet on her wrist."
"If I tell her, she calls a lawyer. A real one. She calls a lawyer, and I go to prison — federal embezzlement, Nora, do you understand what that means? I would die in a cell."
"You're fifty-two years old."
"And I would still die in there."
"Then live with people knowing. Live with the consequences. That's what the rest of us do every day."
"What consequences." He was on his feet again. "Who else our age loses everything they've built? You think we come through that? You think the bank lets us keep this house through a lawsuit? You think one single person we know ever calls us back?"
"I don't have people who'd call, Douglas. I have your coworkers' wives. That's it. That's what twenty-three years bought me."
He came around the coffee table toward me.
"You listen to me. You walk into that office Monday morning and say one word to that girl, and we are done. Finished. The kids will know. Your sister will know. Every man who's ever shaken my hand will know exactly what I am."
"Then get ahead of it. Tell her yourself, first."
"No."
"Tell her, or I will."
"You won't."
"Try me."
He grabbed my wrist. Not hard. Just enough.
"Twenty-three years," he said quietly. "Twenty-three years of marriage, Nora. You owe me your silence. If nothing else, you owe me that."
I looked down at his hand around my wrist. Then back up at his face.
"I owe Martin Cole's daughter the truth," I said. "I've owed it to her since 2001 and never knew. That debt is bigger than my marriage to the man who robbed her."
He let go. But he wasn't finished.
"You tell that girl anything, and I swear to you, Nora, I will make you regret it. I'll tell every judge in this county that you knew. I'll say you spent the money — on the house, on your mother, on yourself. I will burn down whatever little life you think you're going to have after me."
I picked the folder up off the table and held it against my chest again.
"Then we'll both burn," I said.
I went upstairs without looking back at him. I pulled my old suitcase down from the closet shelf and started folding sweaters into it.
My hand brushed the velvet box at the back of the dresser. The pearls.
I left them there. Some promises aren't worth the weight of carrying them out the door.
Douglas appeared in the bedroom doorway, gray in the face.
"Nora, stop. Whatever you think you're about to do — think about what it does to us. You'll lose the house. The pension. Everything we built together."
"We didn't build it, Douglas. You stole it, and I dusted it."
"Please. Ashley doesn't need to know any of this. Her father's gone. Telling her doesn't bring him back."
"No," I said. "But it brings me back. And it's the right thing to do."
I finished packing with him standing there.
The next morning I drove to the Bluebird Diner on Delmar Avenue and asked Ashley to meet me in a back booth.
She slid in across from me looking nervous. "Mrs. Merritt? Is everything okay? Is Douglas all right?"
I set the blue folder on the table and pushed it across to her.
"Read this," I said. "Then call a lawyer. A real one — not anyone Douglas recommends to you."
Her eyes moved over my face. "What is it?"
"Everything your father lost," I said. "And everything my husband spent twenty years hiding from both of us."
I stood up before she could open the cover. I put money on the table for the coffee I hadn't touched.
As I reached the door, I heard her gasp behind me.
May you like
I didn't turn around.
By Monday morning, Douglas would have to sit across a desk from the one person left in the world he could never lie to again.
