Chapter 12: Hello, Husband

I called Nathan from the road and told him everything in four sentences.

"Don't go alone," he said.

"I'm not going alone. I'm going with you on the line."

"Imogen."

"Listen to me. Leave the call open. Put it on speaker. Have two lawyers in the room with you and one at the courthouse. If I say a word, you act."

He was silent for a full breath.

"What word?"

"Four hundred and ten," I said.

I hung up before he could argue.

Nathan's driver took me through the Ames gate at nine o'clock that night.

The guard at the booth stared.

He knew the face under the hood.

He did not stop me.

The front door was open.

I walked through the marble hall past the staircase and the portrait of the Ames ancestors and the console where I had left my keys for five years.

The study door stood ajar, with light under it.

I pushed it open with my fingertips.

Preston was sitting at his desk with a glass of whiskey.

Lydia was on the leather sofa in a silk robe with her ankle propped up.

His lawyer stood by the window with a folder.

Two men in dark jackets stood against the wall.

Nobody spoke.

I walked in and shut the door behind me.

Lydia screamed.

It was a high, thin, animal sound, and a glass she had been holding slipped from her fingers and burst on the floor.

The lawyer dropped his folder.

Papers slid across the carpet.

"It's a ghost," Lydia said. "Preston, it's a ghost, it's her, she's dead."

"She's not a ghost," Preston said.

He had not moved.

He was looking at me over the rim of his glass, white to the lips.

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