Chapter 7: What She Said Six Months Ago
Emma read the message twice.
Then she set Daniel's phone down on the counter, face-up, and walked to the kitchen window.
"What did you say to him six months ago?" Daniel asked.
His voice was even.
He wasn't accusing her.
He was asking.
"I don't know what he's referring to," she said.
"But I think I'm about to find out."
She picked up her own phone and called Kyle.
He answered on the first ring.
"Smart," he said.
"What do you think I said to you six months ago?"
"You know exactly what you said.
We were at Mom's birthday dinner.
You'd had two glasses of wine.
You told me that sometimes you felt like Richard was more invested in the idea of being a father than he was in actually knowing you.
That you felt like a project to him.
That you wondered if your real father would have loved you differently."
Emma was quiet.
"I recorded it too," Kyle said.
"I've been recording things for a long time.
It's a useful habit."
"You recorded a private conversation at a family dinner."
"I recorded an honest conversation.
One that Richard would find very interesting, given that he just drove back across town to play the hero."
Daniel was watching her face.
She turned away from the window.
"Let me ask you something," she said to Kyle.
"You've been building this for how long?
The recordings, the texts, the dinner conversation about the woman who regretted her stepfather — how far back does this go?"
A pause.
"Long enough."
"Why?
You said it was about the money.
Richard's money.
But you could have found a hundred ways to get close to that without destroying my relationship with the man who raised me.
So what is this actually about?"
Silence.
"Kyle," she said.
"What did Richard do to you?"
The silence stretched longer this time.
When Kyle spoke again, the practiced ease was gone.
"He told my father — our father — that Daniel was the one worth investing in.
That I was a liability.
He said it at a business dinner eight years ago.
My father came home and told me directly.
Two months later, our father changed his will." His voice had gone flat.
"Daniel got the business shares.
I got a watch."
Emma closed her eyes.
"Richard gave your father that advice," she said.
"He sat across a table from my father and told him that one of his sons was worth more than the other.
And my father believed him." A pause.
"So yes.
When Daniel started dating you, and I realized who Richard was to you, I thought — eventually — I'd find a way to make him feel what that's like."
Daniel had gone completely still across the room.
"You spent eight years on this," Emma said.
"I wasn't in a hurry."
"And you used me to do it."
"You were the door," Kyle said simply.
"I'm sorry it was you.
Genuinely.
But yes."
Emma opened her eyes.
She looked at Daniel.
He looked back at her.
"Kyle," she said.
"I'm going to say something and I need you to hear it.
What Richard said to your father may have been wrong.
I don't know what happened at that dinner and I'm not going to defend something I wasn't there for.
But what you did to me — three months of messages, a manufactured father, hope that wasn't real — that wasn't justice.
That was cruelty.
And you aimed it at someone who never hurt you."
Nothing from the other end.
"I'm not dropping the recording," she said.
"But I'm also not going to use it today.
Today I'm getting married.
And after today, Daniel and I will decide together what happens next." She paused.
"Don't contact me again before the ceremony."
She ended the call.
Daniel crossed the room in four steps and put his arms around her.
She let him.
She stood very still inside the embrace and breathed.
"I didn't know," he said into her hair.
"About the will.
About any of it."
"I know."
"I'm sorry he used you."
"I know that too."
A car turned into the driveway.
Through the window, she could see Richard's silver sedan pulling up to the curb.
He got out slowly, still in the same clothes he'd left in, and stood for a moment looking at the house.
Emma stepped back from Daniel.
"I need to go talk to him," she said.
"Go," Daniel said.
"I'll be here."
She walked to the front door and opened it before Richard reached the porch.
He stopped on the second step and looked at her — really looked at her, the way he used to when she was small and had come to him with something she didn't have words for yet.
"You came back," she said.
"I told you I would."
She stepped down off the porch and hugged him.
He held on.
After a moment he said, quietly, into the top of her head: "I never thought of you as a project."
She tightened her grip.
"I know.
I was wrong to say it.
Even to him."
"You were allowed to have complicated feelings."
"Not like that."
He pulled back and looked at her face.
"Are you alright?"
"I will be." She took a breath.
"There's a lot I need to tell you.
But first — will you still walk me down the aisle?"
Richard's face did something she hadn't seen it do in years.
The careful composure he always wore, the steadiness she had leaned on her whole life — it cracked, just slightly, at the edges.
May you like
His eyes went bright.
"That's the only reason I came back," he said.
