Chapter 4
Margaret answered on the second ring.
“I was expecting you to call,” she said.
That made my fingers tighten around the phone.
“Did Ethan give the lender your number as mine?”
“He asked me to take a call.”
“Did he tell you to say you were me?”
“He said they might ask questions about the house.”
I leaned against the hotel room wall. I had gone back there because I could not yet sleep in a house where Ethan and Lauren were staying.
“What did you tell them?”
“They haven’t called.”
“Would you have pretended to be me?”
“Claire, my son is desperate.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
She sighed.
“I told him I wouldn’t do it unless there was no other choice.”
For years, Margaret had measured a choice by whether it helped Ethan. I had admired how fiercely she loved her son. I had not realized how readily she could dismiss anyone else.
“You will not speak to the lender as me,” I said.
“I understand.”
“I need you to tell Nathan exactly what Ethan asked.”
“Are you trying to get him arrested?”
“I’m trying to find out what he did.”
“He’s your husband.”
“He used my name.”
She was silent.
Then she said, “I’ll call Nathan.”
The next morning, I went to the police station with Mara. I gave a statement about the application and the signature. The officer took copies and told me an investigator would contact me.
Afterward, I sat in Mara’s car for ten minutes before I could make myself move.
I had walked into that station to report my own husband.
Mara did not hurry me.
“You can feel awful about this and still have done the right thing,” she said.
“I keep thinking about his staff.”
“Then we can make sure your decisions concern the facts in front of you. Ethan will have to make decisions about his business.”
That afternoon, Ethan called from the house.
“Margaret says you reported me.”
“I reported the signature.”
“You know what this could do.”
“Yes.”
“Then why?”
I watched rain gather at the edge of the hotel window.
“Because if I hadn’t found that letter, you would still be trying to borrow against my home.”
“I told you the lender hadn’t approved it.”
“You made an appointment to verify the loan.”
He went quiet.
“Are you going to deny that too?” I asked.
“No.”
He sounded exhausted.
“I owe people money,” he said. “More than I told you.”
“How much?”
He named an amount that made me sit down.
Some of it was business debt. Some was personal. He had borrowed from friends, from Margaret, and from a man whose name I did not recognize.
“Does Lauren know?”
“Not all of it.”
“Tell her.”
“She’ll leave.”
“She should get to decide with the truth.”
Ethan made a sound I could not quite hear.
“We were supposed to start over,” he said.
“You could have told me about her and left. You could have told me about the debt. You had choices.”
“I know.”
I ended the call before he could ask me to solve it.
At six, Lauren appeared outside my hotel room.
I had not told her where I was staying. Nathan had given Ethan the address for the delivery of a document, and I guessed that was how she found me.
“I don’t want to fight,” she said when I opened the door.
She held a small overnight bag and looked frightened.
“Is everything all right with the baby?”
“Yes. I went to my appointment this morning. Ethan couldn’t come.”
I stepped aside. She entered but stayed near the door.
“He told me about the debts,” she said. “He says you’re making them worse by reporting the application.”
“He signed my name.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
She took a folded page from her bag.
“This was in his desk. I thought you should see it.”
It was a draft email addressed to someone at the lender. Ethan had written that his wife was ill and unable to come to the verification appointment. He proposed sending his mother in her place with my identification.
My stomach dropped.
“Did he send it?”
“I don’t know. I found it in his drafts.”
“Why bring it to me?”
“Because he said you’d agreed to the loan and were only denying it to punish us. Then I read this.”
I sat on the edge of the bed.
Lauren remained standing.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” she said. “I knew he was married when we started seeing each other. I let him tell me you were separating, even when I had reasons to doubt it.”
“You could have asked me.”
“Yes.”
“He told you Ruth’s house was his inheritance.”
She nodded.
“Once I was pregnant, he said he’d told you everything. I wanted that to be true.”
I believed that last part. Wanting something to be true had kept me from asking questions in my own marriage.
I took a picture of the draft and called Mara.
When I looked up, Lauren was holding the doorframe to steady herself.
“You need to sit down,” I said.
“I’ve been trying to find an apartment. Ethan says we have to stay in the house because he paid for part of it.”
“He signed an agreement to leave by Friday.”
“I know. I read it.”
She sat in the chair.
“Could you tell him you’re not throwing the baby out?” she asked. “He keeps saying you are.”
I thought of Ethan using an unborn child to defend the loan. I thought of Lauren wearing Ruth’s robe.
“I gave you a week,” I said. “I’ll honor it. You should make a plan that doesn’t depend on what Ethan tells you.”
She nodded and left.
The following morning, Mara sent me the lender’s reply to Ethan’s draft email.
He had sent it after all.
May you like
The lender had refused to accept Margaret in my place.
Ethan had written back with a new question: whether a notarized power of attorney would be enough.
