Daniel brought in an old player from the bank’s office. When he pressed the button, static filled the room.
Then Charles’s voice emerged.
“I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a coward.”
My chest tightened.
“I watched Bradley take the first money because he told me it was temporary. His business was failing. He promised he would return it. When I found out the amount was larger than he admitted, he said Margaret had agreed. I knew she hadn’t.”
A pause. His breathing was audible.
“I confronted him. He said if I exposed him, he would tell Margaret about Daniel. He knew I had kept that friendship secret. He said she would see me as a liar, and he was right.”
The tape clicked softly.
“I allowed my shame to become his weapon.”
I closed my eyes.
Charles continued.
“Margaret, none of this is your fault. Not the money. Not my silence. Not the years I spent trying to make a marriage out of fear that you would discover I had never stopped regretting the summer before you met me.”
The recording ended.
Neither of us moved.
At last, Daniel said, “There is one more thing.”
He opened the red folder.
Inside was a letter from Bradley, dated eighteen months earlier.
It had been addressed to Charles.
You need to sign the remaining papers or I will tell her what you have hidden. She will leave you, and you will have no one. Don’t pretend you’re protecting her. You’re protecting yourself.
Beneath the letter was a second page, written in Charles’s hand.
He knows about Daniel. He thinks the truth will destroy her. He does not understand that lies have already done it.
I held the page against my chest.
That afternoon, we went to the county office. Daniel had already arranged for an investigator and an attorney to meet us there. The investigator, a woman named June Alvarez, spoke gently but never softened the facts.
“The signature on the power of attorney is not yours,” June said. “We have the original from the county archive and your verified signature from your driver’s license application. The differences are obvious.”
“Can Bradley go to prison?”
“If the evidence is admitted, yes.”
The words did not satisfy me.
Prison would not return the three years Charles and I had spent under a cloud of fear. It would not erase the look on Bradley’s face when he pushed my suitcase toward the door.
June continued, “There is another issue. Bradley used the power of attorney to sell the house you shared with Charles.”
My breath stopped.
