Chapter 5: The Woman Who Came Back
Olivia returned that afternoon.
I was in Michael's kitchen making tea I didn't particularly want when I heard the knock at the apartment door.
Michael was in the sitting room with his phone face-down on the coffee table, which was how I knew he was deciding whether or not to answer calls.
He had been sitting there for two hours.
He opened the door.
Olivia had changed out of the wedding gown.
She was in dark trousers and a pale grey blouse, her hair pulled back.
She looked, I thought, like someone who had prepared very carefully for a different kind of meeting.
"Can I come in?" she said.
Michael stepped back.
He didn't invite her in so much as simply not stop her.
She saw me in the kitchen doorway and stopped.
"I'd like to speak to Michael alone."
"She stays," Michael said.
Olivia's mouth pressed together.
Then she walked to the sitting room and sat down across from the sofa.
She waited for Michael to sit.
He didn't.
"I know how this looks," she began.
"Then we don't need to spend time on that part," Michael said.
"I made choices that I shouldn't have made without telling you.
I understand that."
"Which choices specifically?"
A small pause.
"The account.
The property."
"And Daniel."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"I should have told you I'd been married.
I know that."
"Should have told me," Michael said.
"Not that you were still legally married when you accepted my proposal."
"I thought it was resolved.
I thought the filing had gone through —"
"Stop." His voice was flat.
"My mother has an attorney.
I have had six hours to think.
Please don't tell me something that we both know isn't true."
Olivia looked at her hands in her lap.
When she looked up, something had shifted in her expression.
The prepared version of her had stepped back, and something harder had stepped forward.
"What do you want from me, Michael?"
"I want to understand why."
"Why what?"
"Why my mother's money.
Why the house with Warren Schultz.
Why any of it.
If you needed money, you could have asked me."
"I couldn't ask you."
"Why not?"
"Because everything you have is connected to her." Her voice sharpened despite herself.
"Every conversation about our future involved her.
The wedding funds — her idea.
The venue — her suggestion.
The guest list — she knew half of them.
There was no part of building a life with you that didn't have her fingerprints on it."
"So you took her money instead."
"I built something that was mine.
That she couldn't walk into and rearrange."
"With another man's name on the title."
Olivia's jaw tightened.
"Warren was a business arrangement."
"He was your husband's opponent in the property dispute connected to your previous name."
Her eyes went very still.
"You've been busy."
"My mother has been busy.
I've been sitting in my sitting room trying to figure out how I spent fourteen months not seeing any of this."
She leaned forward slightly.
"Michael.
I love you.
Whatever else happened, that part was real."
He looked at her for a long moment.
"Did you take money from the Hargrove Trust in Charleston?"
The colour didn't leave her face dramatically.
It was more subtle than that.
A slight tightening around the eyes.
"Those charges were dropped."
"That's not what I asked."
"There was a misunderstanding about how the funds were administered —"
"Olivia."
She stopped.
"Did you take the money."
She sat back.
The hardness in her expression settled into something almost resigned.
"The trust was being mismanaged long before I arrived.
I reallocated funds to projects that were more viable.
The board disagreed.
It became political."
"That's a yes," Michael said.
She said nothing.
"And Warren Schultz helped make the investigation disappear."
"He's a very good attorney."
"And now his name is on a house that my mother paid for."
She looked at him steadily.
"I was going to pay her back.
Every cent.
Once the property was sold."
"When were you going to tell her that?"
"After the wedding."
"After you were legally protected."
The silence between them was different now.
Less like an argument and more like a verdict.
Michael walked to the door and opened it.
"I'd like you to leave," he said.
"My mother's attorney will be in touch about the account.
I'd suggest you speak to Warren Schultz about what comes next, since you seem to trust his judgment."
Olivia stood slowly.
She picked up her bag.
At the door, she stopped.
"You're making a mistake," she said.
"You'll realize that.
What we had —"
"Was built on my mother's money and someone else's name on a property deed." He held the door.
"Goodbye, Olivia."
She looked at me one last time from the doorway.
I said nothing.
She left.
Michael closed the door.
He stood with his hand still on the handle for a moment.
Then he walked to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and drank half of it standing at the sink.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
He set the glass down.
"Not yet," he said.
"But I will be."
He looked at me then — really looked — and I saw his face the way I had not let myself see it all morning.
Tired.
Ashamed in the way that good people feel shame when they realize they have been used.
Young, still, in a way that had nothing to do with age.
"Mom," he said.
"I'm sorry."
My throat tightened.
"You don't need to —"
"I told you not to make things difficult.
I told you she was under stress." He shook his head.
"I knew something was wrong.
I kept choosing not to see it."
"You loved her," I said.
"That's not something to be sorry for."
He looked at the window.
"She called you p@thetic," he said quietly.
"And I was in the next room and I had no idea."
The kettle had come to a boil at some point and clicked off.
Steam drifted quietly from the spout.
"I know," I said.
"I should have protected you."
"You protect me now," I said.
"That's enough."
He crossed the kitchen and put his arms around me the way he used to when he was small and the world had done something he didn't understand yet.
May you like
I held my son in his kitchen on what should have been his wedding day.
Outside, somewhere in the city, Olivia Bennett was making a phone call we didn't know about yet.
