Chapter 6 - Marcus
Marcus Kane was nothing like the man I'd built in my head.
For ten years I'd carried a version of him around — the husband my parents wanted for me, the other half of the deal, the face of everything I'd refused. In my imagination he was slick and cold, a man who'd cashed in on the arrangement and never once looked over his shoulder.
The man who opened the door of a plain apartment on the north side of the city was thirty-eight, tired around the eyes, wearing a flannel shirt with a coffee stain near the pocket.
"You must be Rachel," he said. "Come in."
Daniel and I sat on one side of his kitchen table. Marcus sat on the other. He poured three coffees without asking and set them down.
"You told her everything?" he asked Daniel.
"Yes."
Marcus nodded slowly. "Good." He wrapped his hands around his cup. "I want you to hear this from me. I never agreed to what our parents cooked up. I was twenty-two when I found out what that marriage was supposed to be. I told my father no."
"What did he say?" I asked.
"That it wasn't my call." Marcus looked at the table. "My father wasn't a good man, Rachel. What yours did to him — cooperating, letting him carry the whole sentence — that was a betrayal. But my father wasn't clean either. He just wasn't the only one who was dirty."
"What happened to him?"
Marcus was quiet a moment. "He passed away in prison. Four years into the sentence. His heart gave out." He looked up. "I was twenty-six. I'd just started digging into what actually happened. The deal your father made. The audit that was supposed to bring both of them down."
"The audit Daniel was doing," I said.
"The audit Daniel was doing," he said, and looked straight at my husband. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what happened to you until three years ago, when I found the same emails her mother has."
"You have a copy?" Daniel asked.
"I have the original server records," Marcus said. "My father kept everything. He recorded every call he made, which was probably illegal on its own, but here we are." He got up, brought a laptop over, and turned it to face us.
The screen showed an archive. Hundreds of files, sorted by date.
"Fifteen years of it," Marcus said. "Wire transfers. Emails. Recorded calls." He scrolled to a folder dated eleven years back. "This is the week before Daniel's crash."
He opened it. Three audio files. He clicked the first.
A voice I didn't know spoke. Then a voice I did.
My father's voice, unhurried, even: The analyst is a problem. Take care of it before Thursday. And make sure it never comes back on the firm.
I'd heard my father give instructions my entire childhood. He had a particular tone for it — calm, closed, like the matter was already decided. He was using that exact tone here, talking about a person the way you talk about an item on a list.
Daniel's hand found my arm under the table. "That's enough," he said quietly. Then, to Marcus: "Is this what you're bringing to the investigator?"
"This and more. I have a meeting in three weeks." He looked at me. "Your father gets named. There's no version of this where he doesn't. I figured you'd want to know before it's on the news."
"Thank you," I said. It was a strange thing to say. It was the only thing I had.
Marcus closed the laptop. He picked up his coffee, then set it down without drinking.
"Can I ask you something? You don't have to answer."
"Go ahead."
"Are you going to warn him? Your father?"
I looked at Daniel. He didn't move.
"No," I said.
Marcus held my eyes a second, then nodded once, like something had been settled.
"One more thing," he said. "Something I didn't mention to Daniel." He pulled a single sheet from the folder. "My father wrote a letter before he passed. He gave it to his lawyer with instructions to sit on it for ten years, then send it." He slid it across the table. "The ten years were up last month."
It was addressed to me. My name, at the top of a page I'd never seen, in a stranger's handwriting.
Dear Rachel,
If this letter has reached you, then enough years have gone by that the truth can't hurt the people it was buried to protect. I want you to know that your husband is an honest man. He was the only honest man in the building. Everything that was done to him was done because your father was terrified of exactly that.
I was not innocent. But I was not the only guilty man in the room.
I hope life was kind to you. I hope you were happy.
— Arthur Kane
May you like
I folded it carefully and put it in my bag.
Outside Marcus's window, the city went by, ordinary and uninterested. My father didn't know yet that three different people were holding three pieces of the same truth — and that all three fit together without a gap.
