Chapter 4: The Message From R
I stared at the message for the rest of the reception.
Michael was surrounded by his friends, laughing, holding his diploma, looking like the person I had worked eighteen years to help him become.
I smiled every time he looked over.
I held the phone face-down against my thigh.
*We need to talk.
There's more you don't know.
— R*
I didn't know anyone whose name started with R.
Not in David's world.
Not in mine.
On the drive home I pulled over twice to look at it again.
Same words.
Same blankness where a name should be.
I called Michael that evening.
"The message," I said.
"Did you send it from another number?"
"No.
Why?"
I read it to him.
Silence.
"Mom, forward that to me right now."
"Michael, what do you know that you're not telling me?"
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"There was someone else involved," he said.
"When I was going through the records Patricia gave me.
There were calls to a third number.
Someone I didn't recognize.
I didn't want to say anything until I was sure."
"Sure of what?"
"Sure that it was what I thought it was."
I set the phone on the kitchen table and looked at it.
"Tell me."
"The calls started before Dad and Chloe got together.
About eight months before.
They were short.
Mostly late at night." He stopped.
"The number is registered to a property management company.
But the director of that company is a man named Robert Calloway."
The name hit me somewhere behind the sternum.
Robert Calloway had been David's business partner for eleven years.
He had been at our wedding.
He had held Michael as a baby.
He had sat across our dinner table more times than I could count.
"Michael."
"I know."
"Why would Robert—"
"I don't know yet.
But whoever sent you that message knows his name starts with R.
And they want you to know something about him."
I stood up and walked to the window.
The street outside was quiet.
A neighbor's porch light was on.
Everything looked exactly the same as it always did.
"Don't respond to it yet," Michael said.
"Let me make some calls first."
"I'm not sitting here waiting—"
"Mom.
Please.
One night."
I agreed.
I don't know why.
Maybe because his voice had the same tone it used when he was nine years old and asking me to trust him about something I couldn't see yet.
I didn't sleep.
At 6 a.m.
my phone rang.
Not the unknown number.
Michael.
"Robert Calloway was Chloe's brother-in-law," he said.
"Her first husband's older brother.
She was married before, Mom.
For three years.
It ended badly.
And Robert was the one who introduced her to Dad."
The kitchen felt very small.
"He set it up," I said.
"I think so.
I think he had reasons of his own."
"What reasons?"
Michael's voice shifted.
Careful now.
The way he got when the information was worse than expected.
"Dad's company.
The property side.
Robert was a silent partner in two developments.
He needed Dad distracted.
He needed the marriage destabilized.
If you and Dad were fighting, Dad wasn't watching the accounts."
I sat down on the kitchen floor.
I didn't mean to.
My legs just stopped.
"How much?" I said.
"Enough," Michael said.
"Mom, I think we need a lawyer."
My phone buzzed against my palm.
The unknown number again.
One new message.
May you like
*Robert is going to run.
You have maybe 48 hours.*
