Chapter 7: What Cara's Letter Said
Nobody suggested Maya open the letter in private.
Nobody suggested anything at all.
The garden had reached the particular kind of quiet that settles over people when they understand they are witnessing something that cannot be undone, and the only decent thing left to do is stay still.
Maya picked the envelope up from the table.
She turned it over once.
Set it back down.
Then she picked it up again and tore it open, because waiting had stopped feeling like an option.
She read it to herself.
Her eyes moved across the page in the way eyes do when the brain is receiving something it keeps trying to reject.
When she finished, she folded the letter along its crease and held it in both hands.
"Read it out loud," said Edward, from near the hedge.
"Edward—" Evelyn began.
"She destroyed Daniel's birthday cake in front of thirty people," Edward said.
Not unkindly.
Just plainly.
"I think we've earned it."
Maya looked up at him.
Then at Evelyn.
Then at the thirty faces arranged around the garden.
She looked back down at the letter.
And she read it aloud.
*"Maya.
I've started this letter eleven times.
I don't know how to make it easier so I've stopped trying.*
*What I know is this: I watched you.
Not because I was suspicious of you — because I was your friend, and I was paying attention the way friends pay attention, the details other people miss.
And what I saw, slowly, over two years, was a man losing his footing.*
*Daniel is one of the kindest people I have ever known.
You know that.
That's why you chose him.*
*In January I saw the second transfer notification.
You'd left your laptop open at my kitchen table and walked out to take a call.
I didn't mean to see it.
I did see it.
And I sat there for six weeks thinking: maybe there's an explanation.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
Maybe this is between them and it's not my place.*
*Then I saw the February transfer.
Scott's name.
The amount.*
*And I understood that there was no explanation.
There was only what it was.*
*I went to Daniel because I could not go to you.
I tried to imagine the conversation and I couldn't find a version of it where you told me the truth.
I knew you too well for that.
That's the part that broke something in me — that knowing you well meant knowing you'd lie to my face.*
*I'm sorry I couldn't say this to you in person.
I'm sorry I'm saying it in a garden in front of people who will remember it.
I'm sorry this is how it ends.*
*I'm not sorry I told him.
He deserved to know.*
*Cara."*
Maya lowered the letter.
The older aunt by the wall reached into her handbag, found a tissue, and pressed it to the corner of her eye.
Nobody noticed.
Or they all noticed and said nothing.
"She's been at Daniel's for how long?" Maya asked Gerald.
"I'm not at liberty to say."
"Best guess."
"I'm not going to guess," Gerald said, not unkindly.
Maya folded the letter again, smaller this time, until it was a tight square in her palm.
She looked at Evelyn.
"Did you know about Cara?" she asked.
"No," Evelyn said.
"Daniel told me he had a source.
He didn't tell me who until last night."
"And when he told you?"
Evelyn paused.
"I was glad," she said.
"I was glad there was someone who cared enough about him to act."
Maya made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"She was supposed to be on my side."
"She was on the right side," Evelyn said.
"Those aren't always the same thing."
Maya looked at the square of folded paper in her hand.
Then she looked at Gerald's document case, still sitting open on the garden table.
Then she looked at the gate.
Something had left her face in the last ten minutes.
Not the hardness — the hardness was still there.
What had left was the certainty.
The absolute knowledge that she was the one holding the cards and everyone else was simply waiting to see what she chose to do with them.
She had been very sure of that, right up until she wasn't.
"Gerald," she said.
"Yes."
"The petition." She said the word carefully, the way you say a word you have heard many times but are encountering for the first time as something real.
"When exactly was it filed?"
"Thursday morning," Gerald said.
"Nine forty-two a.m."
Maya pressed her lips together.
"And the forensic signature analysis," she said.
"Who commissioned that?"
"Daniel did.
In March.
After Cara came to him." Gerald removed his glasses and cleaned them slowly.
"He was meticulous, Maya.
I've been a solicitor for twenty-six years.
I've rarely seen a client prepare a case this carefully."
Evelyn said nothing.
Maya stared at the garden table for a long moment.
Then she said, "I'd like to use your telephone, Evelyn.
Mine doesn't seem to be reaching anyone."
Evelyn studied her.
"The kitchen," Evelyn said finally.
"Second door on the left."
Maya walked toward the house.
She did not look back.
She did not glance at the folders or the fire pit or the ruined cake still lying in its heap on the stone.
She walked with her spine straight and her chin level, and the only thing that gave anything away was that she kept the folded letter in her right hand the whole way across the garden and through the back door.
The door closed behind her.
Gerald quietly repacked his document case.
"What happens now?" Edward asked.
Evelyn looked at the door Maya had gone through.
May you like
Then at the garden around her — the flowers, the afternoon light, the half-empty glasses, the ruin of the cake on the patio.
"Now," she said, "we find out what she decides."
