Chapter 9 - EVERYTHING IN WRITING
The lawsuit became public before breakfast.
Nathan wanted Emma nowhere near it.
Emma disagreed.
“I’m already in it.”
“You don’t need to read everything.”
“I need to know what happened in my own marriage.”
Nathan looked pained.
Emma continued.
“You do not get to protect me with ignorance anymore.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
The lawyers prepared the messages.
Thousands of them.
Most were boring.
Schedules.
Press statements.
Travel details.
Foundation events.
Then came the personal ones.
Nathan complaining about insomnia.
Olivia telling him he worked too hard.
Nathan sending a photograph of Chicago from his hotel window.
Olivia replying that she wished she were there.
Nathan writing that he wished someone understood how tired he was.
Emma read in silence.
Then she found the message that broke something open again.
Sometimes I feel more understood by you than I do at home.
Emma stopped.
Nathan saw her face.
“I remember that one.”
She looked at him.
“Good.”
“Emma—”
“No.”
He stopped.
She placed the printed page on the table.
“When did you send it?”
“After the Denver acquisition.”
“That was the weekend of my second miscarriage.”
Nathan went completely still.
Emma’s voice became quiet.
“You came home for one night.”
Nathan’s face drained.
“You told me you had to leave again because the Denver deal could not wait.”
He covered his mouth.
“I had forgotten the date.”
“I didn’t.”
Nathan sat down.
Emma continued.
“I was bleeding.”
“You sat on the bathroom floor with me for twenty minutes.”
“Then your phone rang.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“I left.”
“Yes.”
“And that night you told Olivia she understood you better than I did.”
Nathan looked like he might be sick.
“I have no defense.”
“I know.”
Emma stood.
“Maybe that is finally the point.”
Nathan did not follow when she walked away.
Later that afternoon, Eleanor found Emma sitting outside the hospital courtyard.
“You read the messages.”
Emma nodded.
Eleanor sat beside her.
“I want to hate him.”
“You’re allowed.”
“I also look through that nursery window and see him with Sophie.”
Eleanor said nothing.
“That man does not look like the man who left me bleeding on a bathroom floor.”
“No.”
Emma wiped her eyes.
“That makes it harder.”
Eleanor took her hand.
“Change does not erase damage.”
Emma looked at her.
“And damage does not automatically erase change.”
Emma stared toward the hospital windows.
For the first time, she understood the terrifying truth.
Forgiving Nathan would not mean pretending he had been better than he was.
It would mean deciding whether the man standing beside Sophie now could ever become more important than the man who had failed Emma before.
Then Nathan’s attorney called.
A deposition had been scheduled.
May you like
Olivia intended to testify under oath.
And she had named Emma as a witness.
