Chapter 9: The Last Conversation
Priscilla called while Dean and I were driving back toward the city.
His phone lit up on the console between us.
He looked at it.
He looked at me.
"Answer it," I said.
"Put it on speaker.
Say as little as possible."
He picked up.
"Hello."
"Where are you?" Her voice was careful.
Controlled.
"You left this morning without telling me."
"I had an appointment," he said.
"Dean." A pause.
Calculated.
"I've been thinking.
About everything.
I want to sit down and talk.
Just the two of us.
I can explain the money.
I have a way to pay it back, all of it, very quickly, and I think if we can just—"
"Priscilla," he said.
"Has Marcus contacted you today?"
Silence.
Shorter than it should have been.
"Why would Marcus contact me?"
"Because my mother left," Dean said.
"And you know what that means."
Another silence.
Longer.
"I don't know what you think is happening," she said.
Her voice shifted.
Warmer.
Careful.
"But I love you.
This is our marriage.
Whatever mistakes I made, we can fix this.
Don't let your mother turn you against your own wife."
Dean's hands tightened on the wheel.
"Tell me about Robert Fetch," he said.
The warmth dropped out of her voice immediately.
"What?"
"Robert Fetch," he said.
"The name on Marcus's business registration.
The insurance broker who handled my father's policy twenty-three years ago.
Tell me how those two things are connected."
Nothing.
Not a sound.
"How long have you and Marcus been planning this?" he asked.
"Was it before you met me, or further back than that?"
"Dean—"
"How long, Priscilla?"
When she finally spoke, her voice had changed entirely.
The warmth was gone.
The careful management was gone.
What was left was something flat and cold that I had never heard from her before, though I suspected it had always been there underneath everything else.
"You can't prove anything," she said.
"I already have," he said.
"So does the state financial crimes unit."
A sound on her end.
Something small.
A chair.
A step.
"I want my attorney's number," she said.
"That sounds like something you should have thought about earlier," Dean said.
"You're making a mistake," she said.
"Both of you.
I will make this very difficult."
"You already have," he said.
"That ship sailed about fourteen months ago."
"Dean." One more attempt.
Her voice dropped.
Intimate.
The voice that had worked on him for three years.
"We built a life together.
Don't throw that away over money.
Over your mother's feelings.
She has always tried to come between us.
You know that."
He glanced at me.
I kept my eyes on the road through the windshield.
"Goodbye, Priscilla," he said.
He ended the call.
We drove in silence for a while.
Fields on both sides of the road, grey and flat under December sky.
"She's going to run," I said.
"I know," he said.
"I told my attorney this morning to expect it.
He's already spoken to the detective.
They know where she is."
I looked at my son's profile.
The set of his jaw.
The particular stillness of someone who has understood something painful all the way through and come out the other side of it.
"Dean," I said.
"Are you all right?"
He thought about it honestly, which was the right way to answer.
"Not yet," he said.
"But I will be."
I put my hand on his arm once.
He didn't take his eyes off the road.
May you like
We drove the rest of the way without speaking, which was all right.
Sometimes the right company means you don't need words to fill the space.
