Chapter 6 - The Night the Lights Went Out
The apartment above the bookstore had uneven floors and a radiator that sounded like somebody dropping forks down a staircase.
Vivian loved it immediately.
She bought a table from a woman moving to Minneapolis, carried home two mismatched mugs, and placed her mother’s blue scarf over the back of a chair.
For eleven days, nothing frightening happened.
Then the bookstore owner called at nine twenty on a Tuesday night.
“Don’t come through the alley.”
Vivian stopped beneath a streetlamp.
“Why?”
“Someone’s been waiting by the rear stairs.”
Her fingers tightened around her grocery bag.
“Are you inside?”
“Yes. The front door’s locked.”
“Stay there. I’m calling.”
She contacted emergency services and moved into a busy pharmacy, where a cashier let her wait behind the counter.
Her body shook with anger as much as fear.
She had done everything carefully.
She had left.
She had told the truth.
Danger had followed anyway.
That did not mean leaving was wrong.
She repeated the thought until she believed it.
Police found the rear light smashed and the lock damaged. The person in the alley was gone.
A message had been scratched into the painted stair rail.
ASK YOUR HUSBAND WHAT HE KEPT.
Vivian photographed it only after officers said she could approach.
Then she called Victor.
He answered immediately.
“What did you keep?”
He went silent.
She stood in the bookstore beneath a row of hanging paper stars.
“Don’t ask how I am before you answer.”
“There are records my attorney is reviewing.”
“Records of what?”
“Payments. Properties. People who worked for us.”
“Did you disclose that they existed?”
“Yes.”
“Did you disclose all of them?”
A pause.
There.
The old room opening around them.
The door he still believed he could control.
“Victor.”
“There’s an archive Elias maintained before I took over.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Silas?”
“I think he believes I do.”
Vivian pressed a hand against her forehead.
“Then tell investigators exactly that.”
“I will.”
“Tonight.”
“Yes.”
She ended the call.
Ruth arrived twenty minutes later carrying an overnight bag.
“I’m not arguing,” she announced.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good. That would ruin the speech I practiced in the cab.”
Vivian laughed unexpectedly.
Then cried so hard she had to sit on the bookstore floor.
Ruth sat beside her.
Neither spoke for a while.
The next morning, Victor requested a conversation through their attorneys.
Vivian agreed to meet in an office with glass walls and other people nearby.
He looked exhausted.
No coat. No entourage.
Just a man in a dark sweater holding a folder.
“I’ve started giving a complete account,” he said.
She glanced at the folder.
“Because someone threatened me?”
“That made it immediate.”
“But?”
He looked at her.
“Because every secret I keep becomes a place someone else can reach you.”
She shook her head.
“It also becomes a place you can hide.”
He lowered his gaze.
“Yes.”
For once, she believed he understood the difference.
He placed the folder on the table.
It contained a written acknowledgment of the money he had used to influence her life: the debt, the car, the apartment lease he had arranged to terminate, the payments to Noah.
Her attorney would review it independently.
There were no requests attached.
Vivian read the first page.
“You could have done this before.”
“I could have.”
“Before I loved you.”
Victor closed his eyes.
The words surprised her.
They were true.
That made them painful.
She set the folder down.
“Love didn’t make it fair.”
“No.”
“And it doesn’t mean I’m coming back.”
He opened his eyes.
“I know.”
May you like
Outside the office, people hurried toward ordinary lunches.
Vivian watched them and wished, fiercely, for a future where an uneventful afternoon would be enough.
