The Substitute Wife

Chapter 4: Served

Marcus picked up before the first ring finished.

"Tell me you're sitting down," he said.

"I'm always sitting down." Lisa shut her bedroom door and kept her voice low. "What did the lawyers ask?"

"Who benefits from the Reyes estate. Who signs for it. They want a name and an address, and they say they have ten days to get it by agreement before they ask a court to make me." He let out a breath. "I can stall them. I can't stall them forever."

"And the email?"

"Came from Ryan Cole's account. Signed with his name."

She looked at the wall for a while. The paint had a faint c***k near the window, and she had never noticed it before.

"Don't answer it yet," she said.

"Lisa. If it's him, you can't just..."

"I know. Give me till morning."

She hung up, and she did not let herself think. She turned her chair around and went to find her husband.

Ryan's study was on the second floor, and the light was still on. He sat at the desk with his sleeves rolled up and a stack of papers in front of him, and when she came in he stood so fast the chair rocked behind him.

"Lisa. I was about to come up."

"You said that on the terrace."

He flinched, and she let him. She rolled up to the desk and put the tablet down between them, open to page nineteen.

"Read it."

He read it. She watched his eyes go down the page and stop. They stopped on her name, then on the date, and then the color left his face in one slow movement.

"That's not," he said. "I didn't." He tried again. "I never saw this page. Lisa, I swear on my father. I signed one sheet at the agency and my mother's lawyer took it away."

"Whose handwriting is that?"

"It looks like yours."

"It looks like mine. It isn't mine."

He sat down again, heavily. For a moment he just held the tablet in both hands, as if it might say something different if he waited. "March fourteenth. You were in surgery."

"Yes."

"Then somebody forged you." He swallowed. "And I handed my mother the pen."

It was the closest thing to an apology she had heard from him in four months, and it nearly worked. She felt it in her chest, the old pull toward him. She made herself stay where she was.

"Someone sent a request about the Halvorsen license tonight," she said. "From your email."

His eyes came up. "You know about that?"

"Marcus Alvarez told me."

"Who is he?"

"My lawyer."

"Since when do you have a lawyer?"

"Since I started needing one." She held his gaze. "Did you send it?"

Ryan rubbed his jaw. He looked, suddenly, very tired. "Whitfield asked me to. Somebody put a hold on the renewal tonight, and the board is panicking. He said a request from the CEO would move faster, so I signed off and his people sent it." He shook his head. "I thought it was some shark trying to squeeze us. I didn't think..."

"Think what?"

"Nothing." He looked at her differently. "Lisa. What does the license have to do with you?"

The question hung there. She could have told him all of it. Right then, in that room, with him shaken and honest, it would have been so easy. But Vivian had a petition drafted, and a husband who had just admitted he gave his mother the pen.

"Nothing," she said. "I only wanted to know who you were taking orders from."

He took that like a slap, and maybe it was one.

"Give me one day," he said. "I'll find out who forged this. I'll pull the agency's records myself."

"You have until tonight."

"That's all I need."

She did not believe him. She wanted to.

At ten past five, with the sky still black, she dressed and rolled to the elevator. Amara's slip said 5:30, and she had no idea what waited at that address, but she was going.

The elevator opened on the ground floor. A security guard stood in front of the front door, a big man she had waved at for four months.

"Morning, Ms. Reyes. I'm sorry. Mrs. Cole's instructions. Nobody leaves the house before the lawyers get here."

"I'm not nobody, Tom."

"No, ma'am." He looked miserable. "That's why she named you."

She tried the garden door. Locked. The side gate camera had a new red light on it. She was standing in her own home, and it had closed around her like a hand.

At 5:29 her phone buzzed. A text, unknown number.

I'm at the address. Where are you?

Lisa stared at the screen. She typed, I can't get out, and her thumb hovered over send.

Behind her, the elevator opened.

Vivian stepped out in a gray suit, as if she had never slept. Beside her walked a man in a dark coat with a leather case, and behind them came a woman in a physician's jacket. And last, a step behind the others, with his eyes on the floor, came Ryan.

"There you are, dear," Vivian said. "We were just about to wake you."

The man in the dark coat held out an envelope. "Ms. Reyes, I'm Andrew Pell, counsel for the petitioner. You have been served."

Lisa took it. She tore it open and read the first page, and her stomach dropped.

Petitioner: Ryan Cole.

She looked up at him. He had gone completely white. He took the page from her hand and read his own name, and then the signature at the bottom, and then he looked at his mother.

"That isn't mine," Ryan said. "I never signed this."

"Of course you did, darling," Vivian said gently. "It's right there."