Chapter 2 - THE LIE EMILY HAD BEEN LIVING INSIDE
Margaret took Emily home with her forty minutes later.
Nobody tried to stop them.
That surprised Margaret almost as much as what had happened at dinner.
Adrian shouted after Emily from the foyer, but he never followed them outside. Arthur and Steven were still in the dining room. Whatever Adrian wanted to say apparently became less urgent once two directors were there to hear it.
Celeste didn’t come to the door at all.
Emily sat sideways in Margaret’s Volvo as they drove south through Denver, her left hand resting beneath her stomach.
“How long?”
Emily looked out the window.
“Mom.”
“How long has he put his hands on you?”
Traffic crawled near Speer Boulevard.
Emily’s reflection floated faintly in the glass.
“The arm was the first time it got that bad.”
That was not an answer.
Margaret waited.
Emily closed her eyes.
“Six months.”
The first incidents had been small enough for Emily to rename them.
Adrian blocking a doorway during an argument.
Taking her keys because she was “too emotional to drive.”
Gripping her wrist when she tried to leave a restaurant.
Kicking a laundry basket across the bedroom because she had forgotten to pick up his dry cleaning.
Then came the pregnancy.
Adrian had wanted a child for years.
Once Emily became pregnant, however, his protectiveness sharpened into surveillance.
He complained about her working late at the architecture nonprofit where she handled grant design.
He criticized her friends.
He checked household spending.
He began insisting that stress was dangerous for the baby whenever Emily disagreed with him.
Margaret felt something sour settle in her chest.
She had seen pieces of it.
Emily canceling lunches.
Emily saying Adrian preferred her not to drive at night.
Emily laughing when Margaret asked why Adrian answered questions meant for her.
Margaret had accepted every explanation because five years earlier, when Emily first married him, Margaret had criticized Adrian’s arrogance too openly. Emily accused her of trying to control her marriage.
Margaret had responded by becoming deliberately hands-off.
She had mistaken silence for respect.
“What happened to your arm?”
Emily swallowed.
“Last Thursday he wanted me to call you.”
“Why?”
Emily looked at her.
“To ask how you planned to vote tomorrow.”
Margaret’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Emily continued.
“He said there was no reason you should oppose him becoming chief executive after everything his family had done for Dad.”
Margaret said nothing.
That sentence contained an old wound Emily had never understood.
Peter Cole, Margaret’s late husband, had not been rescued by the Westbrooks.
Financially, it had been the other way around.
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t even know you had a vote.”
Margaret glanced at her daughter.
Emily gave a weak, humorless smile.
“Apparently neither did he until recently.”
There it was.
The first contradiction.
At dinner Adrian had recognized the voting document immediately.
Yet according to Emily, he had only recently discovered Margaret could influence the company.
“How recently?”
“About three weeks.”
“And who told him?”
Emily hesitated.
“Celeste.”
Margaret’s phone vibrated in the center console.
Arthur Bell.
She ignored it.
A second message arrived.
Then a third.
Emily stared at the screen.
“What does thirty-eight percent mean?”
Margaret drove another block before answering.
“It means your father saved Westbrook Development during the recession.”
Emily turned toward her.
“And?”
“And your mother-in-law has spent sixteen years making sure nobody called it that.”
When they reached Margaret’s townhouse in Washington Park, Emily remained in the car.
“There’s something else.”
Margaret waited.
Emily’s eyes filled, but she kept her voice level.
“When Adrian broke my arm, he wasn’t asking me to convince you anymore.”
“What was he asking?”
May you like
Emily looked down at her sling.
“He wanted me to sign something.”
