Chapter 15
The Glass House
Z
Ethan walked through the front door at six o'clock, shaking the rain from his dark coat and carrying a white paper box from my favorite Italian bakery. He smiled the moment he saw me standing by the kitchen island, a look of pure, unguarded warmth that instantly melted the tension in the room.
"I brought cannolis," he announced, setting the box down. "To celebrate officially unpacking the kitchen."
"Ethan," I said gently, not returning the smile just yet. "I got a letter today."
He paused, sensing the shift in the atmosphere. The playful energy dissipated, replaced by the calm, focused attention he always gave me when things got serious. "A letter from who?"
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the folded yellow paper, and slid it across the marble countertop. Ethan looked down at the red federal stamp on the envelope, and his jaw instantly clenched. He didn't hesitate. He pulled the letter out and read it in silence.
I watched his face closely, looking for the microscopic tells of guilt or panic. I looked for the subtle shifts in eye contact that liars make when they are caught.
Instead, Ethan just sighed. It wasn't a sigh of a man whose dark secrets had been exposed; it was the exhausted, pitying sigh of a man looking at a desperate animal thrashing in a cage.
He looked up at me, his eyes entirely clear.
"She’s trying to poison the well, Rachel," Ethan said quietly, his voice steady. "She knows she can't touch our bank accounts, she knows she can't ruin Kyle anymore, so she's trying to ruin the only thing we have left: our trust."
"Is there any truth to it?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "The Cayman accounts? The architectural firm?"
Ethan walked around the kitchen island, closing the distance between us. He didn't try to touch me or crowd my space; he just stood close enough so I could see the absolute sincerity in his eyes.
"Rachel, when I hired the investigator to find her, I handed over my entire financial history to the FBI to clear my name. If I had offshore accounts, if I had committed fraud at my firm, I would be sitting in a cell right next to her. She's throwing buzzwords at you hoping your past trauma will do the work for her. She wants you to panic. She wants you to doubt me."
He reached out and gently took my hand. "I gave you my unlocked phone the night we exposed her. I gave you my passwords. I have given you every piece of my life. There are no Cayman accounts. There is no trap. There is just you, and me, and this apartment."
I looked down at our joined hands, and then back up at the yellow letter on the counter. The poison Lauren had tried to inject into our home suddenly looked incredibly pathetic. It was the desperate, flailing attempt of a narcissist who had lost all her power.
I picked up the letter, walked over to the stainless steel sink, and pulled a lighter from the utility drawer.
"What are you doing?" Ethan asked softly.
May you like
"Cleaning house," I replied.
I flicked the lighter, held the flame to the edge of the yellow paper, and watched as Lauren's final, desperate lie turned into black ash and washed down the drain.
