Chapter 5: The Husband Who Didn't Know
I drove back to the mansion slowly, taking the long way through the neighborhood, giving myself time to think before I had to speak.
Caden was sitting on the front step of the old house across the street when I pulled through the gate.
He stood when he saw my car.
I parked, got out, and walked toward him.
He crossed the street to meet me at the mansion's front path.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
"Taylor," he said.
"Please.
Just talk to me."
"Come inside," I said.
He followed me through the front door.
My mother was in the garden with Donovan, visible through the rear glass doors.
Caden glanced at them, then back at me.
"Where did you go this morning?" he asked.
"To see an attorney," I said.
"Gerald Marsh's attorney."
His face changed.
Not the way a guilty person's face changes.
The way a confused person's does — something shifting behind the eyes, a piece moving that he hadn't known was on the board.
"Gerald Marsh," he repeated.
"My father."
"Yes."
"Taylor, my father didn't have anything.
My mother told me—"
"I know what your mother told you," I said.
I set the folder on the table between us.
"Read the first page."
He picked it up.
I watched him read.
His jaw tightened at Bonnie's signature.
He turned to the next page.
Then the next.
He set the folder down without finishing it.
"She lied to me," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"For years," I said.
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then: "How much did she know?"
"Everything," I said.
"The will.
The trust.
The condition.
She knew that if I ever moved into this house, everything transferred to me.
She knew that from the week your father died."
Caden pressed both hands flat on the table.
He didn't look up.
"That's why she treated your mother like that," he said slowly.
"She was trying to make you leave.
If you left me, you'd never move in here.
You'd never know."
"That's what the attorney believes," I said.
"And me." He finally looked up.
His eyes were red at the edges.
"She used me.
She knew I'd go along with how she treated you because she'd spent my whole life telling me you weren't enough.
That your family wasn't good enough.
That you were lucky to have us." His voice broke on the last word.
"And I believed her.
I sat there while your mother stood over that stove and I believed her."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Taylor.
I am so sorry."
I looked at him for a long time.
The man I had married was somewhere inside the one standing in front of me.
I had loved him.
Part of me still did.
But love and trust are not the same thing, and I had learned that the hard way.
"I believe you're sorry," I said.
"But sorry doesn't tell me who you are when she's not in the room."
He flinched.
"I need you to do something," I said.
"Not for me.
For Donovan.
And for yourself."
"What?"
"I need you to call your mother and ask her to come here.
Today.
And I need you to ask her the truth — in front of me."
He stared at me.
"If you can do that," I said, "then we have something to talk about.
If you can't, then we don't."
May you like
He reached for his phone.
His hand was shaking when he dialed.
