Chapter 6: What Renee Wanted Her to Know
My attorney's name was Patricia Hale.
She had been recommended to me by a colleague at work six weeks earlier, and the first thing she had said in our initial meeting was: *Don't move anything.
Don't confront anyone.
Just document.*
I had documented.
When I finished telling her everything that had happened that evening, she was quiet for a moment.
"The text message," she said.
"The one that said don't say anything, I'll handle it.
Did you see the full message or just the preview?"
"Just the preview.
He put the phone in his pocket."
"Okay.
That's still useful as context.
What we need now is the business registration documents.
You said you printed those?"
"They're in the folder."
"Good.
I also want the full transfer history if you can get it.
Not just the statements you found — I want to subpoena the account records directly.
That way nothing can be disputed as incomplete."
"Can you do that quickly?"
"Once you file, yes." A pause.
"Are you ready to file?"
I looked around the kitchen.
The empty chair where Daniel had been sitting.
The two coffee mugs still on the drying rack from that morning — his and mine, side by side, the way they had been every morning for three years.
"Yes," I said.
"Then come in tomorrow at nine.
Bring the folder."
I said I would.
We ended the call.
I didn't sleep much that night.
Not because I was crying — I had moved past that somewhere on the drive home from the barbecue.
I lay in the dark and thought about Renee Calloway in a green dress, dancing at my wedding while I cut the cake twenty feet away.
I thought about what it takes to do that.
To stand in a room where someone is celebrating a life you wanted and smile and give a toast and cry quiet tears that everyone assumes are happy ones.
I didn't hate her for it.
That surprised me.
I had expected to feel something sharp and hot when I finally let myself think about her as a real person.
Instead I felt something closer to tired recognition.
She had loved him first.
She had a daughter with him.
She had probably told herself the arrangement was practical, that it wasn't what it looked like, that she wasn't doing anything wrong.
People are very good at telling themselves that.
My phone lit up at 11:47 pm.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*Please don't do this.
He's all Ava has.
Whatever you think you know, it isn't worth destroying her family over.
— Renee*
I read it twice.
She had my number.
Daniel had given her my number.
I set the phone on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling.
*He's all Ava has.*
Not: *I'm sorry.* Not: *You deserve the truth.* Not even: *I know this is painful.* Just a sixteen-year-old girl held up like a shield between me and any consequence Renee was afraid of.
I picked the phone back up and typed one sentence.
*If you contact me again, I'll forward this to my attorney.*
I set it back down.
At 11:52, she replied: *You don't understand what you're doing.*
I didn't respond.
At 12:08, another message arrived.
This one wasn't from Renee.
It was from Ava.
*I know what my dad did.
I know it wasn't right.
But please don't leave him.
He won't survive it.*
I sat up in the dark and read it three times.
Sixteen years old.
Texting her father's wife at midnight to beg her to stay.
I thought about what kind of pressure a child has to be under to send a message like that.
Who had been in the room with her when she typed it.
Whether she had typed it herself or whether someone had handed her the words.
May you like
I didn't reply to Ava either.
But I took a screenshot of both messages and emailed them to Patricia Hale before I put the phone away.
