Chapter 9: What Arthur Knew
Three weeks passed.
Julian's attorney filed a motion claiming damages for the property destroyed at the Westchester house — the broken china, the Persian rug, the drywall.
The number Hale put on it was $34,000.
My father laughed when he read the filing.
Not unkindly.
Just the laugh of a man who has seen this move before.
"He's trying to establish you as the aggressor," he said.
"If he can make the table the story, the sl\*p becomes a reaction instead of an assault."
Patricia filed a response the same day attaching the medical record, the physician's photographs, and a timeline establishing that the property damage occurred after and in direct response to physical violence.
She also attached Diane's sworn statement.
Hale went quiet for eleven days.
Then he filed again, this time challenging the admissibility of Serena's emails on the grounds that they had been obtained without Julian's consent.
Patricia had been expecting this.
She filed a counter-brief citing three precedents and noting that the emails had been provided by a party to the original correspondence who retained full legal right to her own copies.
Hale went quiet again.
On a Tuesday morning in the fourth week, Patricia called me.
"Arthur Ashworth wants to meet," she said.
I stopped walking.
I was on my way to a shift at the hospital, my first one back since the wedding.
"Julian's father?"
"He contacted my office directly.
Not through Hale.
His own private attorney made the call." A pause.
"He wants to meet with you.
Without Julian.
Without Victoria."
I stood on the sidewalk in the cold.
"Why?"
"He didn't say.
But he asked specifically that you come alone, and that the meeting be kept confidential." Patricia's voice was careful.
"I don't recommend going without me."
"I'll take you with me," I said.
"But I want to hear what he has to say."
---
Arthur Ashworth looked smaller away from his house.
At the dining room table he had been a silent shape behind his eggs, a man who had looked up from his food only after his son's hand had already come down.
In the conference room of his private attorney's office in Greenwich, he was just an older man in a good suit with tired eyes and hands that didn't quite stay still.
His attorney, a quiet man named Forsythe, sat beside him.
Patricia sat beside me.
Arthur looked at my face.
The swelling had gone down by then, but the faint discoloration was still there if you knew where to look.
"I owe you an apology," he said.
I didn't say anything.
"I should have stopped it," he said.
"I've told myself for years that I stay out of Victoria's way because it keeps the peace.
That's not a reason.
That's a cowardice I dressed up as a reason." He looked at his hands.
"I knew about Diane.
I knew what happened with Serena.
I told myself those marriages had failed for complicated reasons.
That Julian had his problems but he was working on them." He paused.
"I watched him h\*t you and I looked at my plate."
"Yes," I said.
"You did."
He didn't flinch from that.
"I'm not here to ask for your forgiveness.
I don't think I've earned that." He looked up.
"I'm here because I want to give you something."
Forsythe opened a folder and slid a document across the table to Patricia.
She read it.
Her expression didn't change, but she turned it toward me.
It was a personal statement, notarized, signed by Arthur Ashworth.
It described what he had witnessed in the dining room on the morning after my wedding.
It described what he had known about Julian's previous marriages.
It named Victoria's role in coaching Julian through each one.
It was four pages long and it was specific and it was written in the plain language of a man who had decided, late and imperfectly, to tell the truth.
"This is voluntary?" Patricia asked Forsythe.
"Entirely," Forsythe said.
"Victoria doesn't know," Arthur said.
It wasn't a question.
"No," I said.
He nodded.
"She won't forgive me for this." He said it without drama.
Just a fact he had already made his peace with.
"But I've been not forgiving myself for a long time, and that hasn't worked out any better."
I looked at the statement in my hands.
Four pages.
Arthur's signature at the bottom of each one.
"Why now?" I asked.
He was quiet for a moment.
"My granddaughter called me last week.
Chloe's daughter.
She's nine.
She called to tell me about a play she was in at school." He looked at the table.
"And I thought about what she's going to grow up watching.
What she's going to think is normal." He looked up at me.
"I'm sixty-seven years old.
I have maybe one or two things left I can do correctly.
This is one of them."
I set the statement down.
"Thank you, Arthur," I said.
He nodded once.
He didn't smile.
He didn't seem to expect anything in return.
But when Patricia and I stood to leave, he said, quietly: "She's going to fight very hard, Victoria.
She'll say I'm not of sound mind.
She'll say Forsythe pressured me.
She'll say anything." He looked at me.
"Don't let her make this about me.
Keep your eyes on Julian."
"I will," I said.
We left him sitting at the conference table with his hands folded in front of him, a man settling a debt he had owed for a very long time.
In the elevator, Patricia said nothing until the doors closed.
Then: "That statement, combined with what we already have, is enough."
"Enough for what?"
May you like
She looked at me.
"Enough for everything."
