Chapter 3 - BEFORE HE EVER LOVED ME
Elsie stared at Adrien’s handwriting.
Useful. Keep asking.
The words were worse than the kiss.
The kiss had destroyed fourteen months.
Those three words reached backward and destroyed time she had believed belonged only to her.
“How did you get these?”
Roman answered carefully.
“From a phone connected to a subcontractor we were already investigating.”
“Adrien’s phone?”
“No.”
“Marissa’s?”
“No.”
“Then whose?”
“A man named Vincent Rusk.”
Elsie knew the name.
Not well.
He supplied temporary crews along the waterfront.
He also attended her wedding.
Table twelve.
Chicken entrée.
She remembered because she had finalized the seating chart herself.
“Why would he have photographs from my sister?”
“That is one of the things we’re trying to determine.”
Elsie stood.
“I know how.”
Roman watched her.
“Marissa knew Adrien before me. Adrien helped my father. Marissa copied my notebooks.”
She picked up the photograph.
“She wasn’t passing information to Adrien after we started dating.”
“No.”
“She helped him choose me.”
Roman did not soften the answer.
“That is what it appears.”
Elsie left Bellamy Holdings at eleven forty-three.
At noon, she texted Marissa one sentence.
Doyle’s. One o’clock.
No accusation.
No threat.
No question.
Marissa arrived nine minutes early.
That told Elsie more than lateness would have.
They sat in a booth near the back.
Marissa had no makeup on.
She looked younger.
More like the girl who used to climb into Elsie’s bed during thunderstorms.
Elsie placed the photograph between them.
Marissa’s face went white.
“Where did you get that?”
“So it’s yours.”
Marissa stared.
“Where did you get it?”
“Seventeen months ago.”
“Elsie—”
“Three months before I met Adrien.”
Marissa looked toward the window.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
Elsie leaned back.
“You can.”
“I mean you won’t understand.”
“People keep saying that to me.”
Marissa shut her eyes.
“Dad was going to lose the house.”
“I know.”
“He wasn’t sleeping.”
“I know that now.”
“He had bills hidden everywhere. He’d started talking about selling Mom’s things.”
Elsie’s chest tightened.
“Adrien offered a way out.”
“In exchange for Bellamy information.”
“Not at first.”
“At first?”
Marissa looked miserable.
“He wanted to know who handled certain permits. Which companies Roman used. Who worked which shifts.”
“That is Bellamy information.”
“He made it sound harmless.”
“And you believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
There was brutal honesty in that sentence.
Marissa wrapped both hands around her untouched coffee.
“He said his father had been pushed out of the North End because of the Bellamys. He said Roman’s family had ruined people for decades and nobody ever held them responsible.”
Elsie thought of the stories.
The whispered ones.
Roman had never pretended his family sold greeting cards.
“He wanted revenge?”
“He called it balance.”
“That’s usually what revenge calls itself.”
Marissa looked at her.
“You sound like Mom.”
The words hurt.
Elsie continued.
“Why me?”
“You worked for Roman.”
“So did hundreds of people.”
“You sat in every important room.”
Elsie felt sick.
“Adrien knew that before he met me.”
“Yes.”
“And you told him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marissa’s fingers tightened.
“Because every month he kept Dad’s foreclosure suspended.”
There it was.
Not love.
Not at first.
A payment schedule made from Elsie’s privacy.
“How many notebooks?”
“Three.”
“Three?”
“I photographed pages when you stayed at Dad’s.”
Elsie remembered Sunday dinners.
Sleeping in her old room after late holidays.
Leaving her work bag by the kitchen.
“You went through my bag.”
“Yes.”
“Did Dad know?”
Marissa said nothing.
Elsie stared at her.
“Did Dad know?”
“He knew I was helping Adrien.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“He knew I was giving him information.”
The diner seemed to lose sound.
Walter had sat at the kitchen table Tuesday and lectured Elsie about embarrassment.
He had known.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he thought it was keeping the house.”
“What did you tell him you were giving Adrien?”
“Schedules. Vendor names. Nothing dangerous.”
“Did you believe that?”
“At first.”
Elsie looked at Adrien’s handwriting.
Useful. Keep asking.
“When did you stop believing it?”
Marissa’s face changed.
“That’s where it got complicated.”
“No. This has been complicated since you copied the first page.”
“Adrien started asking about customs documents.”
Elsie remembered one of the twenty-two questions.
Who signs when Howerin’s out?
Her stomach turned.
“I told him no.”
“When?”
“About nine months ago.”
“After he started dating me.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He stopped asking me.”
Elsie almost laughed.
“He didn’t stop.”
“No.”
“He started asking me.”
Marissa nodded.
That was the mechanism.
Marissa had opened the door.
Adrien had learned he could walk through Elsie himself.
“What about you and him?”
Marissa looked down.
“When did that start?”
“It didn’t happen all at once.”
“That sounds like something people say when they want to spread guilt over time until nobody can point at it.”
Marissa flinched.
Elsie waited.
“Two months ago.”
“While he was planning our wedding.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marissa shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“That is not true.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I was angry.”
“At me?”
“Yes.”
Elsie absorbed that.
“At me for what?”
“For leaving.”
“I moved thirty minutes away.”
“You left differently.”
Marissa’s voice hardened.
“You got a good job. Mom trusted you with everything when she got sick. Dad called you when forms needed explaining. Everybody always said Elsie would know what to do.”
“I was twenty-three.”
“And I was twenty-seven and still felt seven.”
Elsie said nothing.
Marissa looked ashamed.
“Adrien understood that.”
“No.”
Elsie’s voice remained quiet.
“He used it.”
Marissa looked away.
“That doesn’t make what I did okay.”
“No.”
For the first time, they agreed.
Elsie picked up the photograph.
“One more thing.”
Marissa’s shoulders tightened.
“What was the object Adrien gave you Saturday?”
The color left her face.
Elsie had her answer before Marissa spoke.
“You saw that too.”
“Yes.”
Marissa reached into her purse.
Not the clutch from Saturday.
A large leather bag.
She removed a black plastic case no bigger than Elsie’s thumb.
Inside was a memory card.
“He told me to keep it somewhere safe.”
“What’s on it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t look?”
“He told me not to.”
Elsie stared at her.
“You stole my mother’s ring, copied my work notebooks and slept with my fiancé, but a request for privacy stopped you?”
Marissa looked physically ill.
“I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds accurate.”
Elsie held out her hand.
Marissa hesitated.
Then gave her the card.
“When did he give it to you?”
“Saturday.”
“Before or after you kissed him?”
“After.”
“Why?”
“He said everything was changing.”
“What did that mean?”
“I thought he meant you.”
Elsie slid the card into her purse.
Then Marissa grabbed her wrist.
“There’s something else.”
Elsie looked at her hand.
Marissa released it.
“Adrien didn’t just help Dad with the house.”
“What else?”
“He gave Dad work.”
“Parker Construction doesn’t exist anymore.”
“On paper, it does.”
Elsie frowned.
Marissa took out her phone and showed her a photograph.
A contract.
PARKER SITE SERVICES LLC.
Local logistics partner.
Manuso Redevelopment Group.
Elsie read the signature at the bottom.
Walter Parker.
The date was six weeks earlier.
“What is this?”
“Adrien told Dad he could get his company back.”
Elsie kept reading.
Then one phrase stopped her.
Operational liaison services to be provided through Parker family relationships.
Her stomach turned.
“What family relationships?”
Marissa looked at her.
“That’s what I asked.”
Elsie scrolled to the attached schedule.
There it was.
A name.
Not Marissa.
Not Walter.
ELSIE PARKER — BELLAMY HOLDINGS.
She looked up.
May you like
Marissa’s voice was almost a whisper.
“Dad signed it anyway.”
