Chapter 5: What Gerald Knew
I had twenty-four hours and I used the first two of them sitting at my kitchen table reading everything Renee had given me a second time, slower, looking for anything I had missed.
My mother called at nine that evening.
"A woman named Delia phoned me," she said.
Her voice was careful, like she was testing the weight of each word.
"She apologized.
She said the haircut was — she called it a miscommunication.
She said she wants to make it right."
"What did you say?"
"I said I'd think about it." A pause.
"She was crying."
I didn't say anything.
"She didn't sound like someone reading from a script," my mother said.
"She sounded frightened."
I put that aside for the moment.
"Mom, I need to ask you something, and I need you to think carefully before you answer.
When Marcus suggested the salon — how did he bring it up?
What exactly did he say?"
The silence stretched long enough that I could hear her breathing change.
"He said Delia owed him a favor," my mother said slowly.
"He said it was a good chance to use it."
"Did he say what the favor was for?"
"No.
I didn't ask.
I thought he just meant — I thought it was kind."
She went quiet again.
I could hear her working through it.
"It wasn't kind," she said finally.
It wasn't a question.
"No, Mom.
It wasn't."
She didn't cry.
She was quiet for a long time, and then she said, in a voice that had gone very still: "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find out what Marcus is afraid of."
The next morning I did something I hadn't planned.
I looked up Gerald Harmon — Marcus's uncle, the trust administrator — and I found, in a three-year-old local news archive, a short article.
A business dispute.
A settlement.
Marcus's name appeared twice, in the background of a paragraph about a property sale that had gone sideways.
Gerald had not come out well in that settlement.
The article was only four paragraphs long, but I read it six times.
I was still reading it when my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
"Is this the woman Marcus was engaged to?"
The voice was older.
Male.
Deliberate, the way people speak when they are used to being listened to.
"Who is this?"
"My name is Gerald Harmon," the man said.
"I think we should meet."
I sat very still.
"How did you get my number?"
"Marcus called me last night.
He told me you had a recording and that you were planning to send it to me." A pause.
"He thought that would make me want to stop you."
"And does it?"
"No," Gerald said.
"It makes me want to hear it."
The kitchen felt suddenly very small.
"Mr.
Harmon," I said carefully.
"Before we meet, I want to understand something.
Marcus seemed afraid of you.
Not of the recording.
Of you."
A long silence.
"He has reason to be," Gerald said.
"The trust was never structured the way Marcus described it to himself.
He misread a clause four years ago, and rather than ask me to clarify it, he built an entire — strategy — around a misreading."
"What clause?"
"The condition is not that he remains unmarried until forty," Gerald said.
"The condition is that any marriage must be in good faith.
Coerced, engineered, or fraudulent marriages are explicitly excluded." He paused.
"Which means Marcus has been avoiding marriage unnecessarily.
And in doing so, he's been harming women for no financial benefit whatsoever."
I set my phone down on the table, realized I'd done it, and picked it back up.
"He didn't need to do any of this," I said.
"No," Gerald said.
"He did not."
Outside the window, a bird landed on the fence post and tipped its head sideways.
"Mr.
May you like
Harmon," I said.
"I'll meet you."
