Chapter 8: What Maya Said Before She Left
The police came at nine-seventeen that evening.
Two officers.
Helen met them at the door and spent twelve minutes in the hallway with them before anyone else was brought into the conversation.
When she came back into the living room, she looked at Daniel first.
"They'd like to speak with you outside," she said.
Daniel stood.
His jacket was still on.
He had not taken it off the entire time he had been sitting in that chair, as though some part of him had always known he would not be staying.
He looked at Maya once before he followed the officers into the hallway.
She still didn't look up.
The front door opened and closed.
The three of them — Marcus, Arthur, Maya — sat in the room together in the silence that followed.
A clock ticked somewhere.
A car passed outside.
Arthur shifted on the sofa and made a small, involuntary sound as the movement caught his jaw.
Marcus looked at him.
"I want you to get that looked at tonight."
"It's fine."
"Dad."
"It's fine, Marcus." Arthur's voice was firm but not unkind.
"Sit down.
Stop hovering."
Marcus sat.
The silence returned.
Maya had not moved from the armchair.
Her phone was face-down in her lap.
Her hands were folded over it.
She looked diminished in the large chair — smaller than she had seemed an hour ago, when she had been performing for an audience.
Marcus studied her profile for a moment.
Then he said, "Why Arthur?"
She didn't answer immediately.
"Of all the ways this could have gone," he said, "why involve my father?
Why not just — ask me for a divorce?
Ask me for a settlement?
Why this?"
Maya looked up for the first time in a long while.
"Because you would have been fair," she said.
He stared at her.
"A fair settlement." Something in her voice was hollow now, scraped clean of everything it had been performing.
"You would have been decent and fair and I would have walked away with exactly what was reasonable.
Exactly what a good man gives his ex-wife when things don't work out." She paused.
"I didn't want reasonable.
I wanted the trust account.
I wanted financial security that I couldn't lose.
That no one could take back." Her jaw tightened.
"Your grandfather set that up for your family.
It was never going to be mine.
Not through a fair settlement.
So—"
"So you decided to take it."
"So I thought about how to get access to it." She shook her head once, slowly.
"Daniel said it was possible.
He said if Arthur signed the authority over, we could structure the transfer before anyone noticed." She looked at Marcus.
"I know what you think of me right now.
I know what I look like."
"Do you?" Marcus asked.
"Yes." She held his gaze.
"I look like someone who married you for the money."
He waited.
"But that's not how it started," she said.
"That's not—" She stopped.
Started again.
"It changed.
I changed.
Or Daniel changed me.
I don't know anymore." She pressed her lips together.
"I don't expect you to believe that."
"I don't," he said.
She nodded.
Just once.
As though that answer was also reasonable.
As though she had expected it and had decided, somewhere in the last hour, to stop arguing with what was real.
Helen came back into the room.
"The officers would like a brief statement from Arthur before they go," she said.
"And from you, Marcus, regarding the footage.
I'll be present for both." She looked at Maya.
"You should leave before that process begins.
Going home is your best option right now.
An attorney will contact you within twenty-four hours."
Maya stood.
She picked up her bag from beside the armchair.
She smoothed the front of her crimson dress — the torn neckline, the one she had pulled apart with her own hands, which she had held shut with one fist for most of the evening.
She walked toward the hallway.
At the doorway she paused, but she didn't turn around.
"Arthur," she said.
A silence.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Arthur looked at the back of her head.
His expression was unreadable.
She walked out of the room.
The front door opened.
May you like
It closed.
And then she was gone.
