Page 82 of Wreckage and Rain

The Bennets spent five years telling me I didn't belong. Too common. Too loud. Too much. The truth was the opposite. I was making Colt whole, and a whole son is harder to move around a chessboard. The fraud needed a malleable CEO. I was in the way of that.

I close the report. Set it on the table. Walk to the window.

I am married to a man who was sold out by his own father.

I press my forehead against the cold window glass.

I want to call him, but I don't.

***

I sit with the report for two days.

I read it again. I read parts a third time. I cry in the shower. I open my laptop and stare at the cursor and close my laptop. I walk to the lake and stand there for two hours and walk homewith my fingers numb and my brain quieter than it has been in months.

I think about Colt in a hotel room not knowing how he got there.

I think about Colt at our kitchen island, six months before all of this, making me coffee and asking how the writing was going.

I think about the man I married, and the man who showed up at my bookstore with sunflowers, and the man in eight photos.

All of them are him.

The truth isn't simpler than the photos. It is more complicated than the photos. He chose her every night before the celebration. And then on the night of the celebration, somebody took the choice away from him entirely. The first part he did to me. The second part was done to him. The drugging doesn't erase what he chose. What he chose doesn't erase the drugging. I hold the two of them at the same time.

I put the envelope under my arm and I go to Vibes.

I need to say it out loud to someone who isn't Colt, not Autumn, not my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. I need to hear what it sounds like in a room.

I need Sam.

***

Sam

After the show, Summer comes back to my office with a manila envelope in her hand and a face that tells me she has been sitting with something heavy for a few days.

She sits across from me on the couch. Pulls her knees up. Sets the envelope on the cushion between us like it needs to be handled carefully.

"I need to tell you what's in this."

"Okay."

"Take a minute. Get a drink. You're going to want one."

I pour two whiskeys. Hand her one. She doesn't drink it. I sit on the other end of the couch. Wait.

"Colt's in Chicago. He left this at my door three days ago. He didn't knock. He didn't ask to see me. He didn't ask for a response. He left me a note on top. You should know all of it. I won't ask for anything else."

I take that in. Nod once.

"What's in it?"

"A private investigator's report. Three months of investigation. His father hired Cheyenne to have me removed from our marriage."

I stare at her.

She lays it out. The headhunter email. The compensation. Three hundred and forty thousand dollars a year. The phased strategy. The deleted calendar entries.