Chapter 2 — The Woman I Was Going to Marry

“For a while,” I repeated.

Natalie nodded, then shook her head, as if she could still find a version of her answer that I would accept.

“Evan wasn’t doing well. Your mother was terrified he’d hurt himself.”

“So you asked her to frighten me out of running my restaurant.”

“I said you needed a break. I never told her to set the place on fire.”

My mother seized on that. “She didn’t.”

Natalie looked at her. “Marianne, please.”

For the first time, I saw that they were arguing about who had said what, while I was still trying to understand how either of them had come to discuss ruining my business.

I took one step back. “Who had my alarm code?”

“I don’t know,” Natalie said.

“You watched me change it last Tuesday.”

“That doesn’t mean I gave it to anybody.”

A horn sounded behind her parked car. She moved toward it, and I saw my chance to leave without another word. Instead, I photographed the street, the boarded entrance, and the side door. I wrote down what both women had said while I could still remember it clearly.

Natalie watched me. “What are you doing?”

“What I should have done ten minutes ago.”

I called Rosa from my car.

She answered before the first ring ended. “Danny?”

“I’m here. I saw your message.”

“Everybody’s safe,” she said at once. “I made sure. Luis went to urgent care because his throat hurt after the smoke, but they sent him home.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve got the hours, and I’ve got their direct deposit information. The insurance people called asking for the last six months of payroll records.”

“Send everything to my personal email. Don’t use the office address.”

There was a pause. “Okay.”

“I can cover part of Friday’s payroll. I’m working on the rest. Please tell them exactly that.”

“You don’t have to figure it out alone.”

I watched Natalie and my mother speaking beside the curb. Natalie’s hands moved quickly. My mother stood still, listening.

“I know,” I said, though I didn’t yet believe it.

After the call, I rang the fire investigator whose card I had received that morning. I reached her voicemail. I left my name, the restaurant address, and a request to speak as soon as possible. I said I had information about possible entry to the building. I did not try to explain the whole story to a machine.

Natalie knocked on my passenger window.

I lowered it halfway.

“Come home,” she said. “We can talk there.”

“We are talking.”

“With your mother standing right there?”

“You came with her.”

“I didn’t. She called when she saw me pull up.”

I looked past Natalie. Marianne was getting into her car.

“Did she call you before or after she set the fire?”

Natalie’s face went still. “That’s cruel.”

“It’s a question.”

“I didn’t know when it happened. She called me afterward.”

“And Evan?”

She stared at me for a beat too long.

I had met Natalie six years earlier at a friend’s birthday dinner. She laughed with her whole face and remembered the names of servers after meeting them once. On nights when I came home smelling of fish stock and fryer oil, she sat with me while I worked through menu costs. When the bank turned down my first loan application, she helped me prepare another.

I had believed those things meant she wanted this life with me.

“Evan called me too,” she said.

“When?”

“Daniel.”

“When?”

“Early that morning. He was worried about your mother.”

I started the car. Natalie leaned closer to the window.

“Please don’t go to the police before we know what actually happened.”

I turned the engine off again.

“What do you think happened?”

“I think your mother made a terrible mistake. I think she needs help.”

“You were worried about her when you arrived. Who were you worried about when you gave her the idea?”

Natalie drew herself up. “Evan was in a bad place. You know that.”

“I knew he’d lost his store.”

“He lost more than a store.”

“Then you should have helped him.”

“I tried.”

Her voice broke on the last word. She brought a hand to her mouth and turned away. At first I thought she was crying. Then she hurried toward the bus shelter and bent over the trash can.

I got out despite myself. By the time I reached her, she had straightened up. She refused the water she had brought for me.

“Have you been sick?” I asked.

She gave me a look I couldn’t read.

“It’s nothing.”

“You should see a doctor.”

“I already did.”

Her eyes dropped to my left hand. I followed her gaze to the pale mark where I had been trying on my father’s old wedding band that morning, wondering how it would feel to wear one of my own.

“Natalie,” I said.

“I found out last week.”

I waited.

“I’m pregnant.”

A few hours earlier, those words would have sent me looking for a chair because my legs couldn’t hold me. Now all I could think of was the Saturday she had canceled dinner with me and the way Evan had stopped coming by the restaurant whenever I was there.

“Do you know whose child it is?” I asked.

Her expression hardened. “You don’t get to ask me that on a sidewalk.”

“You came to this sidewalk.”

“I came because I thought you needed me.”

I looked at the paper bag on the roof of her car. A sandwich I couldn’t eat. Water I didn’t want. Small kindnesses laid over something neither of us could take back.

“I’m going to speak to the investigator,” I said.

She shut her eyes. “Marianne could go to prison.”

“She could have killed Luis.”

“I know.”

But she hadn’t asked how Luis was.

I drove to the bank with Rosa’s payroll spreadsheet open on my phone. The balance in my business account had not changed since the previous afternoon. It wasn’t enough, but it would pay several of the kitchen staff while I sorted out the rest.

At a red light, I called Claire Bennett.

Four years had passed since I had last seen her in person. We had grown up on the same block, worked our first summer jobs at the same grocery store, and then taken very different roads out of it. She now ran a company that supplied local cafés and small restaurants. We exchanged birthday messages and occasional photographs of food, but I had never asked her for a dollar.

She answered with, “I saw the news. Are you all right?”

“No,” I said.

“What do you need?”

I gripped the wheel. “A short-term loan. For payroll.”

“How much?”

I told her.

“Send me the figures. I’ll call you in twenty minutes.”

“You haven’t asked what happened.”

“You can tell me when the employees have been paid.”

I pulled into a parking space outside the bank. The moment I ended the call, a text arrived from Natalie.

Please let me explain Evan. It started before the restaurant. I was going to tell you.

I read it twice.

Then a second message appeared.

Don’t ask him about the fire. He’ll say anything if he thinks it will hurt you.

I saved both messages and sent a copy to an email account Natalie had never used. Then I went inside to find out exactly what money I still controlled.