Chapter 4 - MAYA'S STORY
I was discharged shortly after sunrise.
I did not go home.
Detective Ruiz advised me not to return to my condo until San Francisco police could verify that no one associated with the Caldwells had entered it.
Instead, I checked into a hotel under a shortened version of my name.
At nine in the morning, someone knocked on my door.
I looked through the peephole.
Maya stood outside.
She looked as though she had not slept.
I opened the door.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then she started crying.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
She simply covered her mouth and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I stepped aside.
She entered.
“What are you sorry for?”
“For waiting.”
She sat on the edge of the sofa.
“I should have told you years ago.”
“Told me what?”
Maya stared at her hands.
“When I married Lucas, my grandmother left me a house in Sausalito.”
I remembered the house.
Or rather, I remembered Eleanor mentioning that Maya had made a bad investment and lost it.
“That wasn’t an investment, was it?”
Maya shook her head.
“They told me Lucas needed the property temporarily as collateral for a business loan.”
“And you transferred it?”
“I refused.”
My stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
“Lucas spent three months convincing me our marriage would collapse because I didn’t trust him.”
Her voice became quieter.
“Then Charles showed me documents supposedly proving Lucas could lose his company.”
“Were they real?”
“No.”
“How did they get the house?”
Maya looked at me.
“My signature was forged.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“I discovered it almost a year later.”
“Why didn’t you report them?”
She closed her eyes.
“Because by then I had two children.”
That sentence explained more than she probably intended.
“Lucas told me if I went to the police, his family would make sure I was portrayed as unstable.”
Maya wiped her face.
“They had recordings of me crying after my second pregnancy.”
“Recordings from where?”
“The house.”
I thought about the files in the basement.
“They recorded you.”
She nodded.
“They told me they had friends who could testify that I was emotionally unfit.”
“And you believed them?”
“I believed they had money.”
Her answer was brutally simple.
“And money can make lies look respectable.”
I sat across from her.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because Adrian hit you.”
She looked at the bandage near my temple.
“And when everyone looked away, I realized I had seen that exact moment before.”
“With Rebecca?”
Maya froze.
“How do you know about Rebecca?”
“The police found her file.”
Maya stood abruptly.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
She walked toward the window.
“Claire, Rebecca didn’t die in a boating accident.”
My heart pounded.
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know exactly what happened.”
She turned back.
“But two weeks before she died, she came to this house.”
“What did she want?”
“Documents.”
“What documents?”
“Proof that Charles had been moving money through properties belonging to women who married into the family.”
I stared at her.
“And then she died.”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“I was afraid.”
Her voice cracked.
“I had children.”
I understood the explanation.
I hated it anyway.
Maya reached into her purse.
“I kept one thing.”
She pulled out an old USB drive.
“Rebecca gave this to me the last time I saw her.”
I stared at it.
“What’s on it?”
“I never opened it.”
“Why?”
“Because she told me not to unless something happened to her.”
I looked at Maya.
“Maya.”
“She died forty-eight hours later.”
We both stared at the small black drive in her palm.
For three years, Maya had carried a dead woman’s secret.
Now it was sitting between us.
And for the first time since Adrian lifted that plate, I understood something.
May you like
My refusal at dinner had not started a war.
It had interrupted one that had been happening for years.
