Chapter 4 - Six Years of Lies
Dr. Ward helped Nora sit on the bottom stair.
“May I examine your abdomen?”
“Yes.”
“Any direct impact here?”
Nora swallowed.
“My hip hit first.”
“Cramping?”
“Yes.”
“How severe?”
“Maybe six.”
Wesley began pacing.
“This is a performance.”
Nora looked at him.
For years, those words would have worked.
They would have made her wonder whether she was overreacting.
Now blood stained her dress.
There was nothing abstract left.
Ruth crouched several feet away.
“Your father is outside.”
Nora forgot the pain for half a second.
“What?”
“He wanted to come in.”
Nora stared at her.
“I told him no.”
“Why?”
“Because your letter said you wanted me.”
Nora’s eyes filled.
Ruth continued softly.
“He came because he was afraid. But he knows this is not his decision.”
Nora looked toward the door.
Through the rain, she could see a dark figure standing near the last car.
Her father.
Charles Penrose.
Seventy years old now.
The man who had once built companies by making rooms surrender to him.
The man who had told Nora the night before her wedding, If you marry Wesley Hargrove, do not expect me to clean up the wreckage.
Nora had remembered that sentence every day she considered calling home.
She had never remembered what she had shouted back.
I would rather die than become another thing you control.
Maybe both sentences had done damage.
Maybe Wesley had simply stepped into the crack.
“Does he know?” she asked.
Ruth’s voice was careful.
“Some of it.”
Nora laughed bitterly.
“Of course he does.”
“He didn’t know until your letter.”
“Wesley said Dad had people watching me.”
“No.”
“He showed me reports.”
Ruth stared at her.
“What reports?”
Wesley stopped pacing.
Nora saw it.
A tiny movement.
But enough.
Ruth saw it too.
“What reports, Nora?”
“Pictures. Notes. My appointments. Places I went.”
Her aunt rose slowly.
“We never had you followed.”
Wesley scoffed.
“Don’t start rewriting history.”
Ruth did not look at him.
“Nora, when did you see those?”
“After the wedding.”
“How long after?”
“Two months.”
“And that was when you stopped speaking to us.”
Nora stared at Wesley.
He stared back.
A memory surfaced.
Wesley sitting beside her on the edge of their bed.
A brown file folder.
Photographs of her leaving a grocery store.
A handwritten page about her dinner with an old college friend.
Her father’s company logo printed in the corner.
See? Wesley had whispered. They’ll never let you live your own life.
Nora had been furious.
Terrified.
Grateful to the man warning her.
Now Margaret Sloan opened her portfolio.
“Do you still have any of those reports?”
“No.”
Wesley answered too quickly.
Everyone looked at him.
Nora’s stomach turned.
“Why do you know that?”
“I don’t.”
“You just said—”
“You’ve spent six years throwing things away.”
Ruth’s face changed.
Not triumph.
Horror.
“Oh, Nora.”
Wesley pointed at her.
“Do not manipulate her.”
“Where did you get the photographs?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nora rose too quickly.
Pain tore through her abdomen.
Dr. Ward caught her elbow.
“Easy.”
But Nora was looking only at her husband.
“You made them.”
“Nora—”
“You made those reports.”
“That is insane.”
“You made me believe my father was watching me.”
“Your father hated me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“He tried to stop the wedding!”
“That isn’t an answer!”
Her shout echoed through the foyer.
Wesley’s face twisted.
For a second Nora saw exactly how badly he wanted everyone gone.
How badly he needed the doors closed.
Ruth spoke.
“We’re taking her to the hospital.”
Wesley blocked the doorway.
Nobody moved.
Rain blew in around him.
“You take her out of this house,” he said, “and I will make every one of you regret it.”
May you like
Then Nora heard a voice from outside.
“Move.”
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