Chapter 10 — The Other Man Was Real

Julian led her to the end of the upstairs corridor.

Evelyn had passed the last door hundreds of times during her marriage. Nathaniel had always called the room storage.

Now Julian entered a code beside the handle.

Inside, a light came on.

Evelyn stopped on the threshold.

An iron enclosure occupied the center of the room.

There was a narrow bed inside it, a chair, and a bottle of water on the floor. Two restraints hung from a bracket beside the bed. Cameras faced the enclosure from opposite corners.

Nathaniel lay on his side, still wearing the clothes he had worn at dinner.

His wrists were free.

The door of the enclosure was locked.

“What have you done?”

Julian looked at her.

“He had it built.”

“Open it.”

“I will.”

“Now.”

Julian took a key from his pocket.

The lock clicked.

Nathaniel did not wake.

Evelyn stepped inside and touched his shoulder.

He stirred beneath her hand.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

She withdrew.

His eyes remained closed.

“Don’t let him out.”

Evelyn looked at Julian.

“He’s talking about Luke,” Julian said.

For a moment, she could hear the river again.

Then the little apartment.

The chair beside her hospital bed.

All those nights she had thought Nathaniel was inventing someone she might trust.

“Explain.”

Julian brought a chair over.

Evelyn did not sit.

He opened a drawer beneath the monitoring equipment and took out a folder.

“There are things I can explain. There are things I should have told you long ago. None of them make this room acceptable.”

“Then why did you leave him in it?”

“Because he told me he would do something worse if I refused.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“I know.”

She looked back at Nathaniel.

“You should have found help he couldn’t order out of the house.”

“Yes.”

It was the first answer Julian had given without defending anyone.

She turned toward the folder.

“Show me.”

The earliest recording was nearly two years old.

Nathaniel sat in a consultation room, sleeves pushed up, one knee moving beneath the table.

Julian’s voice came from beyond the camera.

“What do you remember after leaving your office?”

“Driving.”

“And afterward?”

Nathaniel looked down.

“I woke up at home.”

“There’s a purchase on your account.”

“I saw it.”

“Do you remember buying it?”

“No.”

The recording stopped.

Julian opened another.

Same room. Same man.

But the shoulders were different.

Relaxed, despite the tension in his hands.

When he spoke, Evelyn gripped the edge of the desk.

“Don’t show him this.”

It was Luke.

Not the injured voice she had first heard at the residence.

The gentleness beneath it.

“Why not?” Julian asked.

“Because he’ll stop me seeing her.”

“Who?”

The man in the recording looked toward the camera.

“Evelyn.”

Julian paused the video.

Evelyn stared at the frozen face.

“When?”

“Before the first kidnapping.”

“Before I was pregnant?”

“Yes.”

She sat down.

Julian waited until she looked at him again.

“His memory wasn’t consistently shared. Luke sometimes knew what Nathaniel had done. Nathaniel often found only the consequences of things he couldn’t remember doing.”

“So he wasn’t pretending when he said he’d never touched me.”

“He did not remember that night.”

Evelyn pressed her palms against her knees.

“That doesn’t explain why he called me a liar.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Or what he did on the bridge.”

“No.”

She looked toward the open enclosure.

Nathaniel was still asleep.

“All those times he disappeared?”

“Sometimes he was unwell. Sometimes he was trying to prevent Luke from returning. Later, he began imitating Luke when he was afraid you would send Nathaniel away.”

Evelyn closed her eyes.

“So some of it was a lie.”

“Yes.”

“And some of it wasn’t.”

“Yes.”

She opened her eyes again.

“Then don’t ask me to call all of it love.”

Julian lowered his head.

“I won’t.”

There were handwritten notes.

Evelyn recognized Nathaniel’s handwriting immediately.

Luke’s was different in small ways, looser, less severe.

The words hurt more than the recordings.

She ate breakfast. She called her friend. Don’t tell her she needs rest when she wants to walk.

Another page had been folded until its corners were soft.

She asked whether I would leave if she said no. Say yes. Mean it.

Below it, in Nathaniel’s handwriting:

You don’t get to tell me how to speak to my wife.

Evelyn set the page down.

She remembered that morning.

The door.

The tray.

The man who had waited for permission to enter.

Her throat tightened.

Julian placed another folder beside her.

“The fire investigation.”

She did not touch it.

“Tell me first.”

“Thirty-two people died at the Cross estate. Family, household staff, guests. Nathaniel was eight.”

Evelyn looked at Nathaniel.

“He told me his mother died.”

“She survived. For years, she lived under another name.”

“Vivienne.”

Julian nodded.

“Audrey mentioned her. I thought she was some relative.”

“She was the person Nathaniel kept hidden from you.”

Evelyn stood and walked to the window.

“Was my father responsible?”

“He helped arrange the financial attack that came before the fire. The recovered evidence connects him to the people who set it.”

“And Marianne?”

“She knew more afterward than she admitted. The detectives were investigating whether she helped conceal evidence.”

Evelyn rested her forehead against the glass.

The father she remembered had carried her upstairs when she fell asleep on the sofa.

He had sat through every school performance.

He had warned her against Nathaniel.

She had thought he was protecting her from heartbreak.

Perhaps he had also been protecting a secret.

“Why did Nathaniel come into our house?”

“His mother arranged for him to enter the placement system under a shortened history. Your father agreed to take him in. Nathaniel grew up under the roof of a man he had been taught to hate.”

“Then he married me.”

“Yes.”

“To reach my father.”

“At first.”

Evelyn turned.

“Don’t make that sound smaller than it was.”

Julian nodded.

“He used your trust.”

Nathaniel woke while she was reading the visitor records from her father’s hospital.

He sat up inside the open enclosure.

For a moment, he looked uncertain where he was.

Then he saw Evelyn.

His gaze moved to the folders.

“Julian.”

“I told her.”

Nathaniel got to his feet too quickly and caught the bedframe.

Evelyn did not approach.

“Did you kill my father?”

“No.”

“What did you say to him?”

Nathaniel looked at her for a long time.

“I told him I knew. I told him I had the evidence. Then I told him I would stop the business proceedings if he gave a full account of the fire.”

“Why?”

His eyes lowered.

“Because you asked me to let him live.”

Evelyn remembered standing in the rain outside Audrey’s house.

She had begged.

He had let her beg.

“Did he agree?”

“He asked about my mother.”

“And?”

“I told him she would never forgive him.”

Evelyn’s hand tightened around the folder.

“He died the next morning.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t get to say those things had nothing to do with each other.”

Nathaniel closed his eyes.

“I know.”

Julian spoke quietly.

“The hospital review found that Richard interfered with his own treatment. It doesn’t tell us every reason.”

“And Marianne?”

“The driver was identified,” Julian said. “The collision was investigated. There was no evidence connecting Nathaniel to it.”

Evelyn looked down at the papers.

Some things had been done by the man before her.

Some had been done by people she had trusted.

Some had happened without either of them intending them.

They had all reached her the same way.

As loss.

“Did you know Audrey was alive on the bridge?”

Nathaniel answered without looking away.

“No.”

“When did you learn?”

“After you were taken into custody. My mother brought her to me.”

“And you didn’t tell Claire.”

“I gave the information to my attorneys. I should have given it to yours. I thought I could handle it without admitting what the investigation would uncover about me.”

Evelyn stared at him.

“You left me there because you were protecting yourself.”

“Yes.”

The answer stripped the room bare.

“What about the hospital authorization?”

“I didn’t sign it.”

“Prove it.”

Nathaniel crossed to the desk and opened a locked cabinet.

He took out copies of disputed records, correspondence, and an internal review.

“I started collecting these after Audrey came to your room.”

“After.”

His hand stopped.

“Yes.”

Evelyn took the papers.

Julian stood beside her while she compared them with the copies Claire had obtained.

Dates.

Signatures.

A blank space where a discharge record should have been.

Then she found a page attached to the original delivery report.

An infant transfer.

Another facility.

A separate identifying number.

Her fingers went numb.

“Julian.”

He looked over.

She pointed.

He read the page once.

Then again.

Nathaniel came closer.

Evelyn pulled the record away from him.

“Don’t tell me what to think.”

She found her phone.

Claire answered sleepily.

“I need you here.”

“What happened?”

Evelyn looked at the transfer entry.

The time was hours after she had been told her child could not be saved.

“There’s a record,” she whispered. “My baby left that hospital.”