Chapter 3
I sent Noah upstairs with my physician, a nanny I trusted, and two guards.
Warm bath.
Food.
Shoes.
Sleep if he could.
No questions.
Not yet.
Then I returned to the entrance hall.
Mark had regained enough confidence to be angry.
“You’re taking a toddler’s story seriously.”
“Yes.”
“He thinks dogs talk.”
“Dogs don’t burn your former wife’s initials into cedar.”
That ended that.
I asked him directly:
“Is Evelyn alive?”
He stared at me.
Claudia answered.
“Yes.”
The room changed.
Mark turned toward her.
“What are you doing?”
She laughed bitterly.
“What exactly are we protecting now?”
Good.
Their alliance had fractures.
I stepped closer.
“How long have you known?”
Claudia said:
“Since September.”
Three months.
Mark said nothing.
I looked at him.
“You?”
His face tightened.
“Longer.”
Of course.
“How much longer?”
“Since she came back.”
“When?”
“May.”
May.
Seven months.
A woman I believed had abandoned her son had been living somewhere near my Colorado lodge since spring.
“And you said nothing.”
“She had no right to come back.”
Not answer.
“She is Noah’s mother.”
“She walked away.”
Claudia looked at him strangely.
There.
Even she did not fully believe that version.
I caught it.
“Did she?”
Mark’s jaw flexed.
Then:
“She chose to leave the marriage.”
Different.
Not child.
Marriage.
Important.
“What did she choose about Noah?”
Silence.
I felt something inside me harden.
For two years I had hated Evelyn because Mark told me she abandoned both of them.
Maybe she had left him.
That was not the same thing.
Claudia picked up her fallen shawl.
“She kept writing.”
Mark turned.
“Stop.”
I did not.
“Writing to whom?”
Claudia looked at me.
“To Noah.”
My son closed his eyes.
Good.
“How many letters?”
She shrugged.
“Dozens.”
“Where are they?”
Mark said:
“Gone.”
I looked at him.
“Burned?”
He said nothing.
That was enough.
May you like
Noah had not grown up without a mother because Evelyn disappeared.
He had grown up inside a story his father maintained by destroying every sentence that challenged it.
