Daniel’s jaw tightened. “I did not know what she was doing until Martin contacted me two weeks ago.”
Martin stood several feet away, stripped of his authority and his confidence. “I found the first altered document in the office safe,” he said. “I thought if I told her I knew, she would ruin me.”
“She was already ruining you,” Judith said.
“I know.”
Jacob moved toward his mother, then stopped when he saw the distance between them.
“May I sit?”
Judith nodded toward the empty chair across from her.
He lowered himself into it.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
His wedding ring was bright against his finger. Judith looked at it and then at the folded letter in her lap.
“I should have stopped this sooner,” he said.
“Yes.”
He swallowed. “I should have asked why you were paying for everything.”
“Yes.”
“I should have defended you.”
Judith’s hands tightened around the envelope. “Yes.”
He looked down.
She could see the boy he had been in the angle of his shoulders, the child who used to fall asleep with one hand wrapped around the edge of her sweater while she read to him. But she could also see the man who had let her stand alone in a room she had purchased for him.
“I wanted you to be proud of me,” he said.
“I was proud of you before you knew how to say my name.”
His eyes lifted.
“I thought if I married her, everything would become easier,” he continued. “The investors liked her family. Her father knew people at the bank. She said the vineyard needed structure, and I believed her because I was terrified I would lose what you built.”
“What we built,” Judith corrected.
He nodded, tears gathering but not falling.
“I knew you were struggling,” she said. “I knew the harvest had been poor and that the restaurant debt was growing. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because every time you helped, I felt smaller.”
Judith looked toward the ballroom, where the flowers drooped in their vases.
“I never wanted you to feel small.”
“I know that now.”
“That is not the same as knowing it when it mattered.”
