William: It’s not our problem. It was for the best for everyone.
Not our problem. My daughter, my Valerie, a not our problem.
I closed the laptop. The room was silent. Downstairs, I could hear the television. Ethan was watching some stupid show. My son. Their son.
I got up and went downstairs. I stood in front of the sofa. He didn’t even look at me.
“Turn it off,” I said.
“What?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Turn off the television. Now.”
Something in my voice, a tone I had never used with him, made him obey. He fumbled for the remote, and the screen went black. Then he looked at me, defiant.
“So,” I said, articulating each word with glacial clarity, “your father takes you to see his friend a lot. To see Jessica.”
His bravado cracked for an instant. He quickly recovered with a sneer.
“So what? She’s more fun than you, and she cooks better.”
“Of course. Married men’s mistresses usually try harder.”
He paled.
“What? What are you saying?”
“That Jessica isn’t Aunt Jessica. She’s your father’s mistress, and you know it.”
I took a step closer. He shrank back on the sofa.
“How long have you known?”
“Forever.”
“Did he tell you that your mother was a witch and that your real family, the one that really matters, was him and Jessica?”
Ethan jumped to his feet. His face was red with fury and something else: fear.
“Shut up. You don’t know anything. Dad and I are a team. You just give us money and make our lives miserable.”
“Did he tell you that my money was his? That all of this—”
I made a sweeping gesture with my hand, encompassing the house, the paintings, the life I had built.
“—would be yours one day? That you just had to put up with me a little longer?”
“Yes, and it’s true. Dad deserves everything. You’re a cold—a cold-hearted—”
He screamed, tears of rage in his eyes. But it was no longer the scream of a spoiled child. It was the tantrum of a discovered conspirator.
I smiled. A smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
“Thank you, Ethan, for saving me any lingering doubt.”
I turned and walked up the stairs. His screams followed me.
“I’m going to tell Dad! He’s going to be so mad! You’ll see!”
“Do it,” I murmured to myself.
When I reached my study, I closed the door and leaned my back against it. The trembling I felt wasn’t from fear. It was from pure contained energy. Rage converted into strength. Now I knew everything, or almost everything. I knew the what. I knew the who. I just needed the how and the finale. The revenge.
The phone rang. It was William. Ethan must have called him immediately. I swiped to accept.
“Yes, honey,” I said in my flattest voice.
“What did you say to Ethan?”
His voice was a hiss of contained fury.
“He’s a wreck. He says you told him some terrible things.”
“Just the truth, William. I told him Jessica isn’t his aunt, she’s your mistress, and that he’s known for years.”
I paused, letting the silence on the other end fill with his panic.
“Do you think it’s okay for an eight-year-old boy to lie to his mother every day? To despise his home while he’s out with his father and his—”
“Charlotte, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear. Jessica is just a childhood friend. Ethan exaggerates.”
“William,” I interrupted, and the ice in my voice must have cut through the hundreds of miles between us, “stop lying. I have the hospital records. Jessica’s and mine. With the cross-outs. With your signature, or something very much like it, where you wrote male over the sex of my daughter.”
The silence was absolute. I could only hear his breathing growing faster, shallower.
“Charlotte, listen—”
“No,” I said calmly. “You listen. You will be back in New York tomorrow, or I will initiate divorce proceedings for adultery, family abandonment, and fraud tomorrow morning. And with them, the hospital papers will go to the district attorney’s office to investigate a possible identity substitution, or worse.”
“No, you can’t—”
“Oh, I can, and I will, unless we talk tomorrow in my house at eight p.m. You and me.”
Then I added, lowering my voice to a lethal whisper,
“You will tell me exactly how it happened. Every detail. Or I will destroy you.”
