Chapter 4 - Eight Thousand Dollars
Nora remained in the hospital for four days.
During that time, Liam was not permitted to visit her.
He came every morning anyway.
He sat in the waiting room with coffee he never drank and stared at the double doors, hoping Nora might change her mind.
She did not.
Officer Ramirez interviewed her twice. Daniel Cross visited once, bringing a pair of wool socks and a paperback mystery novel. Eli Bennett’s mother came on the third day.
Liam recognized her from the legal documents.
Rachel Bennett was a weary-looking woman in her early forties, dressed in a grocery-store uniform beneath her winter coat. She carried a small plastic bag filled with oranges.
When Liam introduced himself, she stopped walking.
“You’re Nora’s husband.”
“Yes.”
Rachel’s expression became guarded.
“I don’t think she wants to see you.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because leaving feels worse.”
Rachel looked at him for a long moment.
“My son almost lost his leg because of your sister.”
Liam lowered his eyes.
“I read the report.”
“Reports don’t tell you what it’s like to hear your child screaming in an ambulance.”
“No.”
“They don’t tell you how many nights he woke up believing he was still under that car.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t hit him.”
“I protected the person who did.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I chose not to know.”
That answer seemed to surprise her.
Rachel sat in the chair opposite him.
“Nora came to the hospital before I did. She stayed with Eli while the doctors worked on him.”
Liam looked up.
“She never told me.”
“She said you were dealing with your father’s death.”
“She was always protecting me from things.”
“Maybe she thought that was love.”
“It was. I treated it like guilt.”
Rachel folded her hands around the bag of oranges.
“The eight thousand dollars paid for the emergency surgery deposit. Gwen promised to repay it within a month.”
“She didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you file charges immediately?”
“I tried. Gwen’s lawyer threatened to claim Eli caused the accident. We had no money for a legal fight. Nora found a witness and convinced us not to give up.”
“What witness?”
“A delivery driver saw Gwen run the red light.”
Liam remembered Nora leaving the apartment at odd hours. The secret phone calls. The locked metal box.
None of it had been an affair.
She had been building a case.
“Why did Nora keep helping Gwen after what she did?” he asked.
Rachel’s expression softened.
“She wasn’t helping Gwen. She was helping Eli.”
The distinction humiliated him.
A doctor appeared and called Rachel’s name. She stood, then hesitated.
“Nora told me something yesterday.”
Liam waited.
“She said the worst part wasn’t the cold.”
His throat tightened.
“What was it?”
“She said she kept looking through the glass, waiting for you to remember who she was.”
Rachel walked away.
Liam sat alone until evening.
When he returned home, the apartment felt like a museum devoted to someone he had lost.
Nora’s coffee mug remained beside the sink.
Her scarf hung over the back of a chair.
The pear tart she had made on the night of the argument still sat untouched beneath a glass cover.
Liam threw it away, then immediately pulled it from the trash and placed it back on the counter.
He no longer trusted himself to decide what deserved to be discarded.
At nine, his phone rang.
It was Nora’s attorney.
“My name is Helen Ward. I represent your wife.”
The word attorney made Liam sit down.
“Is Nora all right?”
“She is recovering.”
“Can I speak with her?”
“No.”
“Is she filing for divorce?”
There was a pause.
“She has not made a final decision.”
The thin thread of hope hurt more than certainty.
“What does she want?”
“For you to leave the apartment before she is discharged tomorrow.”
“It’s our home.”
“She does not feel safe returning while you are there.”
Liam closed his eyes.
“I would never hurt her.”
“You locked her outside in dangerous weather.”
“I know.”
“Then you understand why your assurances may not comfort her.”
Liam packed that night.
He took three suits, casual clothes, toiletries, and the photograph from their wedding that had stood on his dresser. After staring at it for several minutes, he put it back.
He had no right to carry their happiest day into the consequences of his worst one.
Before leaving, he placed Nora’s wedding ring on the dining table.
Beside it, he left a note.
I will not ask you to forgive me. I will only stop making you pay for my failures. The apartment is yours.
He moved into a hotel near his office.
The following morning, Gwen called from the county jail.
Police had arrested her for possession of prescription medication without a valid label, leaving the scene of an injury accident, obstruction, and evidence tampering.
Liam declined the call.
She called six more times.
He declined each one.
At noon, Officer Ramirez came to his office.
“We have evidence that your sister accessed your online banking account.”
Liam looked up from his desk.
“How?”
“She had your password.”
“She helped me organize financial records after my father died.”
“She downloaded statements and altered the notification settings. She also forwarded several bank alerts to an email address she controlled.”
“Why?”
“To monitor whether Nora was repaid.”
“But she never intended to repay us.”
Ramirez placed a printout on his desk.
Gwen had transferred smaller amounts from Liam’s business reserve account over eighteen months.
Nine hundred dollars.
Twelve hundred.
Two thousand.
The total exceeded thirty-four thousand dollars.
Liam stared at the figures.
“She stole from me.”
“Yes.”
“And accused Nora.”
“Yes.”
Ramirez produced another document.
“We also found messages Gwen exchanged with a man named Charles Vale.”
Liam knew the name.
Vale was a property developer whose proposal Liam’s firm had rejected because the project violated safety regulations.
“What did they discuss?”
“Your company.”
The messages showed Gwen feeding Vale information about Mercer Architectural Group’s clients, cash reserves, and pending bids. In return, Vale had paid her gambling debts.
Liam felt sick.
“She wasn’t only trying to destroy my marriage.”
“No.”
“She was destroying my business.”
Ramirez nodded.
“And Nora discovered it.”
The final message on the printout had been sent by Nora to Gwen two days before the balcony incident.
I have copies of everything. You will tell Liam the truth by Friday, or I will.
Gwen had replied:
He will believe me before he believes a thief.
Liam read the sentence until the letters blurred.
That evening, he drove past the apartment building.
Lights glowed in the ninth-floor windows.
Nora was home.
He parked across the street but did not get out.
At 8:17, a figure stepped onto the balcony.
Nora wore a heavy coat and stood just inside the open doorway. She remained there for only a few seconds before retreating.
Liam understood.
She was testing whether she could face the place where he had left her.
He gripped the steering wheel.
His phone rang.
An unknown number.
“Mr. Mercer?” a man said. “My name is Charles Vale.”
Liam’s body went still.
“I believe we have a mutual problem.”
“My sister?”
“Your wife.”
Liam looked up at the balcony.
“What about her?”
“She has documents that could send both Gwen and me to prison.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
Vale laughed softly.
“Not when those documents also prove your company accepted money from accounts connected to mine.”
“I never accepted anything from you.”
“Your signature says otherwise.”
Liam remembered the months he had been sedated, exhausted, and trusting Gwen to place documents before him.
“What do you want?”
“Nora’s evidence.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Then find it.”
“And if I refuse?”
Vale’s voice lost its amusement.
“Your wife survived one cold night, Mr. Mercer. She may not survive the next accident.”
The call ended.
Across the street, Nora’s lights went out.
May you like
And Liam realized the storm had not ended when she escaped the balcony.
It had only begun.
