Chapter 5
Nobody else had noticed.
Clara always noticed.
“I’m here,” I whispered.
The words sounded pathetic after everything.
Where had I been when she needed me before tonight?
At Serena’s apartment.
At Serena’s parties.
Answering Serena’s midnight calls because she insisted she could not sleep.
Leaving family dinners early because Serena was angry.
Telling myself Clara understood the arrangement without ever having the courage to say the arrangement aloud.
Clara had never begged.
That had made betraying her easier.
There had been no smashed plates.
No dramatic accusations.
No public scene.
Only small changes.
She stopped waiting up.
Stopped asking what time I would be home.
Stopped sending me photographs of books she thought I would like.
Stopped reaching for my hand beneath restaurant tables.
At the time, I had told myself marriage settled.
Now I wondered whether I had simply watched my wife disappear from me one inch at a time.
I stayed there until a nurse asked me to leave.
When I stepped back into the corridor, Mateo was waiting.
“So?” he asked quietly.
“She’s alive.”
His shoulders loosened.
I handed him the phone.
“Find Evelyn Mercer.”
By seven the next morning, I knew three things.
Evelyn Mercer had lived at the West 79th Street address for twenty-nine years.
She had spent most of her career as a bookkeeper for a construction company called Lakefront Development.
And Lakefront Development had once belonged to my father.
I stood inside an empty conference room looking over the records Mateo had printed.
My father, Antonio Valente, had died eleven years earlier.
Publicly, he had been remembered as a businessman who owned restaurants, warehouses, transport companies, and real estate.
Privately, his empire had been more complicated.
I had inherited both sides.
Lakefront Development was one of dozens of companies sold or dissolved after his death.
I barely remembered the name.
“Why would Clara be digging into one of my father’s old companies?”
Mateo leaned against the table.
“That’s what we’re trying to understand.”
“Did Evelyn contact her?”
“Looks that way.”
He pointed toward the phone.
“First message from E came four months ago.”
Four months.
Clara had been keeping this from me for four months.
I opened the conversation again.
The earliest messages were cautious.
Mrs. Valente, I apologize for contacting you unexpectedly. I don’t know whether your husband is aware of this situation.
Clara had replied six hours later.
If this concerns Dominic, you should probably speak to him.