She looked down.
“It isn’t real.”
Mark had wanted a performance.
He found someone willing to stand onstage.
“Then why wear it?”
Her eyes filled.
“Because he said you would only understand if you thought you had lost him.”
The cruelty was so small and absurd that for a moment I felt nothing.
Then everything.
“I was in labor,” I said.
Elise’s face crumpled.
“I didn’t know he threw you out.”
“But you knew I had given birth. And you came anyway.”
She closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
There was no comfort in her honesty.
Part 5: Another Name in the File
General Hayes told me I did not have to continue the conversation. But some doors, once opened, could not be closed gently.
“Did Mark know about the money?” I asked Elise.
She hesitated.
“Yes. He knew there was an inheritance. Not the exact amount, at least not from me.”
My fingers tightened around Grace’s blanket.
“Then who told him the amount?”
Elise shook her head. “I don’t know. I knew it was significant, but not twenty million. He said the number first.”
General Hayes looked sharply at her.
