Chapter 7: Chloe's Hand
We sat in my driveway for six minutes without getting out of the car.
David Marsh picked up on the second ring.
I read him the message word for word.
"Don't reply," he said immediately.
"Screenshot it now and send it to my email.
That message is potential evidence of witness intimidation.
It tells us two things: he knows you've seen the documents, and he has a source inside your immediate circle."
"How immediate?" I asked.
A pause.
"Someone who knew about the laptop.
Someone who knew what was on it and when you saw it."
I looked at Jason.
Jason was already looking at me.
"I'll call you Monday morning," David said.
"First thing.
Don't confront anyone tonight."
I sent the screenshot and we went inside.
Patricia made tea without being asked.
Jason sat at the table with his phone face-down, very still, the way he used to sit as a teenager when he was working through something too large for words.
"She called him," he said finally.
Not angry.
Just certain.
"We don't know that yet," Patricia said.
"I know it." He looked up.
"She saw the bank statement.
She recognized his name.
She left the house an hour later and twenty minutes after that he sends Mom a message." He pressed his hand flat on the table.
"She called him."
The kitchen was quiet.
"Why would Chloe know Dennis Harlow?" I asked.
Not to Jason.
Out loud, to the question itself.
Patricia wrapped her hands around her mug.
"Is it possible your husband mentioned him to Jason during the years they were dating?
Before the wedding?"
"Robert died eighteen months before they got married," Jason said.
"We were together two years before that.
So yes.
It's possible."
"Did you ever talk about Dennis with Chloe?" I asked.
"Never.
I barely remembered his name myself."
"Then she found it another way," Patricia said.
"Or Dennis found her," I said.
The words sat on the table between us.
I thought about the timing.
Chloe and Jason's money always being tight at the end of the month.
The snack pantry.
The spare key.
The escalating requests.
The BBQ announcement, performed in front of neighbors, designed to lock me in through public pressure and my son's loyalty.
The lists she sent me for the grandchildren — what to feed them, what activities to plan, thorough and detailed, like a manager writing instructions for an employee.
All of it had felt like carelessness.
Entitlement.
A young woman who had grown up getting what she wanted and had never been told no clearly enough.
But what if some of it had been deliberate?
What if keeping me close — keeping me dependent on seeing my grandchildren — had been the point?
"We can't go there yet," Patricia said, reading my face.
"We need facts."
"I know."
"But I want to make one call tomorrow morning," she said.
"A woman I know who worked court records in this county for eighteen years.
If Chloe has any financial or civil history, any connection to Harlow or his associates, she'll find it."
Jason pushed back from the table and stood up.
He walked to the window.
He stood there for a long time looking at the dark street.
"I have five kids with her," he said quietly.
"I know," I said.
"Whatever we find—" He stopped.
"Whatever it is, the kids didn't do anything."
"I know that too."
He turned around.
His face was very tired and very young at the same time, the way it sometimes looked when he was carrying something heavy — a face I had known since he was eight years old.
"I'm sorry, Mom," he said.
"For the BBQ.
For standing there.
For not—"
"Jason.
Stop."
"I should have—"
"You're here now," I said.
"That's what matters."
He nodded.
He sat back down.
Patricia finished her tea and rinsed her mug at the sink without being asked, the way she had done in my kitchen for thirty years, and the ordinariness of it was such a relief that I had to look away for a moment.
"Get some sleep," Patricia said.
"Both of you.
Tomorrow we find out who Chloe Harlow really is."
Jason looked up sharply.
"Harlow," he said.
Patricia looked at him calmly.
"Her maiden name.
I looked it up in the car." She dried her hands on the dish towel.
"I wanted to be sure before I said it."
The dish towel hung on the oven handle.
The kitchen light hummed.
"Chloe Harlow," Jason said.
Like he was saying it for the first time, which in a way he was.
Dennis Harlow.
Chloe Harlow.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
May you like
Neither of us said the word.
We didn't need to.
