Was Our Marriage Your Revenge? novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Unopened Letter
I found my father on Rhiannon's fire escape at six in the morning, wrapped in her blanket, watching the sun come up over a parking lot.
Rhiannon passed me with her car keys in her teeth and a banana in each hand.
"Eat one," she said around the keys. "Your mouth looks green. I'll be back at seven tonight, and nobody is to leave this apartment without telling me."
She thumped down the stairs.
I sat down next to my father on the cold metal.
"Tell me who handed you the audit," I said. "Tonight is over."
He didn't pretend not to understand.
"Gilbert VanDerzee," he said.
I had been peeling the banana, and my hands stopped.
"Gilbert."
"He came to my study on a Thursday night, with a leather folder and a face like a man at his own funeral." My father kept his eyes on the lot. "He said Quentin's father had been bleeding the firm for two years. Forty million dollars, moved out through shell accounts."
"Gilbert was his partner."
"That was the point. He said he couldn't sit by and watch his best friend sink my bank. He said he'd rather lose the firm honestly than watch me go under with it."
"And you believed him."
"He had the whole audit. Bank statements, signatures. I read it twice." My father's voice went flat. "He cried in my study, Claire. A grown man. He said he'd never forgive himself."
I thought of the handkerchief set so gently in front of me, the night before last, and the hand on my sleeve.
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