Chapter 8: The Question She Couldn't Answer
Vanessa didn't answer right away.
She crossed her arms and looked at Grant the way she had looked at everything since I'd walked in the night before — as if the situation were a minor inconvenience she was deciding whether to address.
"This is exactly what she wants," she said.
"She wants you doubting me.
She wants you destabilized so she can take Lily and walk away with everything."
"That's not an answer," Grant said.
"Grant—"
"Vanessa." His voice had changed.
The softness was gone.
"What is your real name?"
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she smiled — a different smile than the one she had used last night.
Smaller.
More careful.
"Kowalski," she said.
"I changed it years ago.
Vale sounds better professionally.
It's not a crime."
"The fraud conviction in Illinois is," I said.
Her eyes moved to me.
"That was a civil matter.
Fully settled."
"The elderly couple you took it from might see it differently."
"I don't know what you think you've found, but—"
"Thomas Hale," I said.
Her mouth closed.
Grant looked between us.
"Who is Thomas Hale?"
"A man in Nevada who filed a restraining order against her," I said.
"It was later dropped.
I don't know the full story.
But I know the pattern."
"There is no pattern," Vanessa said.
Her voice had gone flat.
"I have had a complicated life.
I have made difficult choices.
That does not make me the person you're describing."
"The marks on my daughter's arms make you the person I'm describing."
"I disciplined a child who was completely out of control because her mother was never—"
"Stop." Grant's voice cut across the room.
Both of us went still.
He was standing by the window with his hands at his sides, looking at Vanessa with an expression I had not seen on his face in years.
Not anger.
Something quieter and worse than anger.
"You told me she was fine," he said.
"Every time I asked about Lily, you told me she was fine."
"She was fine.
Children bruise—"
"She was kneeling on the floor." His voice was very low.
"When Evelyn walked in.
She was kneeling on the floor and you had your shoe on her hand."
"She had just spilled an entire glass of—"
"She's five years old."
The room went quiet.
Vanessa recalibrated.
I could see it happening — the slight shift in posture, the softening of her expression, the pivot toward a different approach.
"Grant," she said, her voice gentler now.
"I know this looks bad.
But you know me.
You know who I am.
This woman—" she gestured toward me "—is trying to destroy what we have because she can't accept that you moved on.
She's a federal agent.
She knows exactly how to make something look worse than it is."
Grant looked at her for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
Then he looked at the financial records still in my hand.
"You moved money in August," he said.
Not to me.
To her.
Vanessa blinked.
"What?"
"The account.
The private account the transfers went to." He pointed at the page.
"I set that up in August.
But I didn't tell you about it until September." His voice was careful now, the way a man's voice gets careful when he is working something out in real time.
"How did you know the account number?"
Silence.
"I didn't—"
"The second transfer.
In October." He took the page from my hand and looked at it.
"Fifteen thousand.
I didn't authorize that transfer."
Vanessa said nothing.
"I authorized forty thousand in September," Grant said slowly.
"I did not authorize fifteen thousand in October." He looked up.
"Vanessa.
Did you transfer money out of that account?"
Her chin came up.
The gentle expression was gone.
"You were going to spend it on her anyway," she said.
"On lawyers and settlements and keeping her comfortable while she dragged you through a divorce.
I was protecting our future."
Grant set the page down on the coffee table.
He sat down on the sofa — the same sofa where she had been sitting last night with his robe and her champagne — and put his face in his hands.
I picked up the page.
"I'm going to get Lily's things," I said.
Neither of them stopped me.
I went upstairs.
Lily's room was at the end of the hall — I knew every step of this house, every creak in the floorboards, every place the light fell wrong in the afternoon.
I pushed open her door.
The room was not how I had left it.
Her drawings had been taken off the wall.
The butterfly mobile above her bed was gone.
Her bookshelf had been rearranged — her picture books pushed to the back, replaced in front by a row of decorative objects that belonged to no child.
Her stuffed rabbit was on the floor in the corner.
Not on the bed.
On the floor.
I picked it up.
I packed her clothes, her books, her butterfly clips, her drawings from the drawer where she had hidden them.
I packed the rabbit and the small blanket she had slept with since she was born.
I was at the door when my phone buzzed.
Carol Briggs.
"The protective order was granted," she said.
"Vanessa Kowalski is to have no contact with Lily Carlisle pending the full hearing.
The hearing is set for Thursday."
"Thursday," I said.
"Four days.
Can you manage four days?"
I looked at the room.
At the bare wall where the drawings had been.
At the corner where the rabbit had been left on the floor.
"Yes," I said.
"We can manage four days."
I walked back downstairs.
Grant was still on the sofa.
Vanessa was standing near the kitchen, her phone in her hand, her face closed and unreadable.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
"The protective order was granted," I said to Grant.
"She is not permitted contact with Lily.
If she attempts contact, that's a violation and she will be removed from this property by law enforcement."
Grant nodded.
He didn't look up.
I looked at Vanessa.
She was already typing something on her phone.
I walked out the front door.
Dana was leaning against the car.
She saw the bag on my shoulder and the rabbit in my hand and she opened the back door without a word.
I put the bag in.
I kept the rabbit.
"How bad?" Dana asked.
"He didn't know about the money she took," I said.
"He figured it out in front of me."
Dana was quiet for a moment.
"That's going to change things."
"Yes," I said.
"It is."
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
The same one as last night.
*You think you won something.
You haven't.*
I looked at it.
Then I forwarded it to Carol Briggs and to my supervisor and I put my phone in my pocket.
May you like
I got in the car.
Dana drove.
