Chapter 86

Miles continues to be hesitant about my returning home, even after I assure him that Garnar’s outburst isn’t anything I haven’t already been used to hearing before.

He insists on stepping out into the hallway first, checking both directions before then leading me outside. We walk together, close but not touching all the way to the parking lot. He stays with me all the way to my car, then glances under it like it might have been tampered with.

Now that I’m looking, I notice Miles’s security men in their dark suits scattered throughout the parking lot around us. I guess he always needs a security detail now.

“Everything looks okay,” Miles says. “If anything happens when you are in that house, call the police first and me second. I’ll break every speed limit in the city to get to you.”

He’s sweet, but it’s making me a bit nervous. Miles is a hot-head, but even at his most angry, most vicious, he’s never laid a hand on me or the girls.

I don’t know why he’s having trouble accepting this divorce, especially when he has Thea waiting in the wings, but I have no doubt he will come to terms with it in time.

It’s the children, as ever, who are my primary concern.

“Thank you, Miles,” I tell him, “For everything.”

“This is only the beginning of what I want to do for you, Esther,” Miles says. “If you would only let me.”

There’s a promise there that I’m not yet ready to evaluate. I have way too much on my plate right now.

So I simply nod, then get in my car. Miles backs up a few feet, but waits until I get the engine running before he turns away.

When I return to the house, Thea is there, sitting at the dining room table. She stands when I walk into the room, then immediately slumps when she realizes that it’s just me returning.

“Where’s Garnar?” she asks.

For all I know, he’s still storming up and down the hallways of the courthouse, stewing from his loss.

“He’ll be here soon, I’m sure,” I tell her.

Thea sits back down. “How did it go?”

It’s strange for her to talk to me like a normal person, but I suppose without Garnar here, I’m the only one who can give her the answers she’s looking for.

“It went fine,” I say. “Garnar’s all yours now.”

Thea closes her eyes and some of the tension eases out of her face. She’s clearly been worried about this. I know she wants to be Garnar’s new wife, but she can’t actually be happy that he wanted to stay married to me.

I wonder if Thea’s baby is Garnar’s. Or maybe Thea just wants somewhere stable to raise her kid. If nothing else, Garnar has been a good father to our two daughters.

I’m hoping it is his love for them that will eventually let him deal with our separation.

The truth of Thea’s pregnancy makes me remember the mysterious anonymous letter tucked away in my drawer.

Before I can give it too much thought, however, Garnar returns home, bursting through the garage door like a bat out of hell.

“There you are,” Garnar grumbles as he stomps toward me. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“She just got here,” Thea says.

“Where have you been?” Garnar demands.

“I’m allowed to celebrate with my friends,” I say. “Even more so, now that I’m divorced.”

Garnar grimaces at the word. “For now.”

Thea slouches ever so slightly.

“We need to talk about what we are going to say to the girls,” I say, hoping to appeal to the father in him. “They are already hurting from this. They will need our united support so they know that none of this is their fault.”

“It’s not their fault,” Garnar says.

Good, I think. We might be able to work with this.

“It’s your fault,” he finishes.

Or not.

“You can’t tell them that,” I say.

“Why not? When it’s the truth.”

“It’s not the truth, and even if it was, which again, it’s not, we shouldn’t try to have the girls take sides. They need us both. We have to be adults about this.”

“The girls deserve to know what kind of old worn-out whore their mother is, so that they will keep from becoming her,” Garnar snaps.

I try to remain calm. “I need you to tell me that we can have this conversation with our daughters without flinging names and accusations at each other.”

“You are worthy of those accusations,” Garnar says.

This is impossible, I realize. I’m never going to be able to talk to the girls with Garnar present. Even if I leave them alone, he’s likely to try to poison them against me.

I don’t know how I thought this could work. We’ve managed to be cordial in front of the girls so far, but even that hasn’t been entirely successful. The girls know something is going on. They are already blaming themselves.

Without knowing what else to do or say, I turn and leave the room, retreating to my locked bedroom where I can refocus. Also, in here I can hide until the girls get home.

That’s a while yet though. What can I do in the meantime?

Looking around, I spot my laptop.

I hedged before, but maybe it is time for me to look for my own place. With Garnar the way he is, I really doubt this co-habitation is going to be successful.

Maybe once Thea talks to him, she can calm him down, but I just don’t know.

It doesn’t hurt to look in the meantime, just in case nothing changes.

I pull my laptop out of my bag, and that’s when I see the anonymous note. Taking it out from where I’ve hidden it, I open it and look at the neat handwriting once more.

The writer could have typed this on a typewriter. It’s almost like, by leaving their handwriting, they expect me to track them down and uncover who they really are.

That could be me just reading into things, but my investigator spirit can’t help but take on the challenge.

The first thing to do when limiting the suspects is to figure out who it is not.

This is not Garnar’s handwriting, nor is it Thea’s, my dad’s or my mom’s. The tight script could belong to someone as meticulous as Davis, the butler, who likely knows all the secrets going on in that house, but no. He’s been a faithful servant to my family for too long to reveal something like this in this way.

If Davis was the one who told, he would simply whisper it in my father’s ear, not develop an elaborate note.

Could it belong to one of Thea’s potentially wounded beaus? Looking for revenge? That’s a possibility too, but why send one to Garnar as well as our parents. A fling might not know about the others.

I do have one suspicion in my mind who I would like to clear. It’s a foolish notion, not subjective at all. Just my silly heart thinking someone I care about might be looking out for me once again.

I open the link to Miles’s campaign website.

On there, he has a hand-written note to his constituents and possible voters.

They all do, its standard candidate flare.

Finding his, I hold up the letter to the side of my screen.

I look back and forth, scrutinizing.

But it doesn’t take much work to notice the handwriting is the same.