Chapter 6 - THE FAMILY CHOSE A SIDE
Marlene came to the hotel the next day.
Claire had not invited her.
Grant had.
I knew because Marlene opened with the sentence he always used when he wanted someone else to do his work.
“Grant is worried about you.”
I remained beside the door.
“You need to leave.”
“Elena, please. You’re about to have his child.”
“My child too.”
“Of course.”
Marlene lowered her voice.
“But shutting him out isn’t healthy.”
I nearly asked whose health she meant.
Instead I said, “He buried me in the garden.”
“He says you stepped into the trench during an argument.”
“He shoveled soil around me.”
“He said he was trying to stop you from leaving while you were hysterical.”
There was no point debating each fact with someone who had already selected a version of reality.
I opened the door wider.
“Leave.”
Her face changed.
“I’ve treated you like a daughter.”
“No. You treated me like Grant’s wife.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Maybe.”
Marlene’s eyes filled.
“Your baby deserves her father.”
“My baby deserves adults who don’t frighten her mother.”
She stood there for several seconds.
Then she said something I did not expect.
“If you go after Grant publicly, Claire goes down with him.”
I stopped.
“What?”
Marlene immediately regretted it.
I saw it.
“What does Claire have to do with what Grant did?”
“She helped him because she was concerned.”
“That’s not what you meant.”
“Elena—”
“What did Claire do?”
Marlene looked away.
The elevator doors opened down the hall.
She stepped toward them.
“Ask her.”
I called Claire before the elevator reached the lobby.
She did not answer.
For four hours, nothing.
Then she arrived at the hotel without makeup, hair pulled into a messy knot.
“I was trying to figure out how to tell you.”
“Start with what your mother thinks can destroy you.”
Claire sat on the end of the unused bed.
“Grant wanted proof you were unstable.”
“I know.”
“I gave him more than messages.”
I waited.
“In May, he asked me to come over after one of your fights.”
I remembered the night.
Grant had blocked the bedroom door with a chair.
When he finally moved it, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried.
Claire came over the next morning.
She made coffee.
I told her I had barely slept.
Then Grant walked into the kitchen and asked, “See what I mean?”
I thought he meant I was exhausted.
Claire now said, “He asked me afterward to write down what you looked like. What you said. That you seemed confused.”
“I wasn’t confused.”
“I know.”
“What else?”
She struggled to answer.
“I told him about Dad’s neurologist.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
“He asked whether pregnancy could trigger psychiatric problems.”
That sentence landed differently.
Not because it was medically informed.
Because it showed planning.
Grant had not merely been collecting my angry texts.
He had been looking for language.
Diagnoses.
Comparisons.
A framework that would make fear look like illness.
Claire whispered, “I think I helped him build it.”
I looked at her.
For the first time, she was not asking me to understand.
She was asking herself whether she could.
May you like
And the Mercer family began to split down the exact line Grant had spent months trying to prevent.
Claire stopped returning his calls.
