Chapter 8 - Ethan Comes to the Door
Ethan showed up two days later.
Not at their house.
At Ruth’s.
That told Claire everything.
He knew she would not open the door for him anywhere else.
Claire saw him through the front window standing on the porch in a gray coat, holding nothing. No flowers. No apology gift. No folder. Just himself, which was somehow worse.
Ruth looked at Claire. “Do you want me to send him away?”
Claire almost said yes.
Then she remembered Ethan laughing across the table.
She opened the door.
Ethan’s face changed when he saw her.
Not because of the fading redness on her cheek.
Because she looked calm.
“Claire,” he said. “Can we talk?”
“You have three minutes.”
He swallowed.
“I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
Claire leaned against the doorframe. “But you knew dinner was meant to humiliate me.”
His silence answered.
She nodded once. “One minute gone.”
Ethan looked down.
“My mother said if you brought those documents forward, it would destroy everything. The company. The foundation. People’s jobs.”
“My father’s life was destroyed.”
“I know.”
“No,” Claire said. “You knew. That’s different.”
The words hit him.
Good.
“I loved you,” Ethan said quietly.
Claire’s voice stayed steady. “Which part of me?”
He looked confused.
“The woman,” she said, “or the risk you were assigned to manage?”
His eyes filled, but she did not soften.
“I didn’t mean for it to become this.”
“That’s the first honest thing you’ve said.”
Ethan took a step closer. “If you go public, my mother will say you’re unstable. She’ll say you stole documents. She’ll say anything.”
“I know.”
“She’ll come after your mother.”
Claire smiled faintly.
It was not warm.
“She already did. Years ago.”
Ethan frowned.
Claire reached beside the door and lifted one photocopied maintenance request.
Ethan stared at it.
His face drained.
“Where did you get that?”
“My father kept copies.”
Ethan looked like the porch had shifted beneath him.
“That shouldn’t exist,” he whispered.
Claire’s smile disappeared.
“Exactly.”
For the first time since she had met him, Ethan looked smaller than his last name.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
Claire folded the paper slowly.
“The truth.”
“I don’t have all of it.”
“Then get it.”
He looked toward the street like a trapped man searching for exits.
Claire stepped back into the house.
“And Ethan?”
He looked at her.
“The next time your mother tells a room I’m unstable, remember she shoved my face into a bowl because she was afraid of a dead man’s paperwork.”
May you like
Then Claire closed the door.
This time, she did not shake afterward.
