My phone rang.
Gavin.
I answered after the third ring.
“Cassandra.”
His voice sounded tired.
“Yes?”
“I never thought you would use those documents.”
“I never thought you would tell our sons I abandoned them.”
He was silent.
Then he said, “I panicked.”
“About losing what?”
“Everything.”
I looked around the kitchen.
Nolan’s homework sat beside a bowl of apples. Parker’s shoes were near the back door. Their ordinary belongings reminded me that the most important parts of my life had never been listed on a financial statement.
“You arrived with three attorneys and asked the court to take the boys from their home.”
“I didn’t think it would become this serious.”
“It became serious because you made it serious.”
He exhaled.
“What do you want?”
“Honesty. With the court, with the boys, and with yourself.”
He hesitated.
“And what do you want from the company?”
There it was.
Not an apology.
Not a question about Nolan or Parker.
The company.
“I have not decided.”
“The board will panic if these records become public.”
“Then perhaps the board should learn how the company was really created.”
His voice softened.
“You sound different.”
“I am different.”
“No,” he said. “You sound like the woman I met before all of this.”
For a moment, I remembered the younger Gavin standing beside our first shuttle van, laughing in the rain because the passenger door would not close properly.
I remembered believing we were building one life together.
“That woman trusted you,” I said.
He had no answer.
The Envelope at the Door
The next morning, I found a plain envelope taped to the front door.
There was no name and no return address.
Inside was a copy of an old company resolution dated nine years earlier.
The document claimed that I had approved a change in voting rights shortly before the twins were born.
My name appeared at the bottom.
The signature looked almost like mine.
Almost.
Across the top, someone had written in blue ink:
You need to learn what was changed while you were in the hospital.
My hands became cold.
A second sheet was folded behind the first.
It contained only one sentence.
Ask Gavin why your mother called him the night before she passed away.
Gavin had always told me he had not spoken to her that week.
Upstairs, Nolan and Parker laughed while brushing their teeth.
