7. Melody
— ? —
Melody
“What letter?” I say again, because the man on the phone has gone quiet, and the quiet is starting to scare me.
Noah stirs beside me, one arm still heavy across my waist. I slide out from under it and pad across the suite toward the terrace doors, phone pressed hard against my ear. The sky outside is barely gray. The ocean hasn’t decided on a color yet.
“The letter regarding your great-grandmother’s estate,” the attorney says. “Dorothea Hayes. I sent formal notification to your home address, oh, seven weeks ago now. Certified mail. It concerned a significant inheritance, Ms. Brooks. I’ll be honest, significant is underselling it.”
“I never got any letter.” I ease the terrace door shut behind me.
The morning air is warm and thick and I’m standing in one of Noah’s t-shirts, and my heart has started doing something strange and fast. “Mr. Patterson, I didn’t even know my great-grandmother had an estate.
We weren’t close. I met her twice in my whole life. ”
“That’s concerning.” Papers rustle on his end. “Because when I couldn’t reach you, I followed up by phone. And I did speak with your husband. Leo.”
Everything in me goes still.
“You spoke with Leo.”
“About five weeks ago. He was very pleasant about it. He told me you’d both received the letter, that you were fully aware of the inheritance, and that you’d retained another attorney to handle the matter privately.
” A pause. “He said you preferred discretion, given the size of it. I made a note of the conversation. It’s right here in front of me. ”
Five weeks ago. I grip the terrace railing and do the math I don’t want to do.
Five weeks ago I was addressing two hundred envelopes at the kitchen table and Leo brought me tea and rubbed my shoulders and told me to stop stressing, that everything was handled.
He kissed the top of my head. Everything’s handled, babe.
“Ms. Brooks? Are you still there?”
“He lied to you.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My husband. He lied to you. There is no other attorney. There was never any conversation between us about an inheritance, because I never saw that letter.” My voice is coming out low and careful, the way you talk when you’re afraid of what will happen if you stop being careful.
“He took it out of the mail before I ever came home, and when you called, he made up a story so you’d stop trying to reach me.
He knew about the money, and he made sure I didn’t. He-”
My voice cracks right down the middle.
“He was planning something.”
The silence on the line stretches long enough that I can hear birds waking up in the garden below, oblivious and cheerful.
“Ms. Brooks.” Patterson’s tone shifts, gentler, and somehow that’s worse.
“I should tell you, I’m not just the estate’s attorney.
I’m a friend of the family. Leo’s family.
I’ve known that boy since he was in Little League.
I handled his grandfather’s will.” He clears his throat.
“I think what likely happened is that he was confused. Mail gets mixed up, spouses miscommunicate. He made a mistake speaking for you, certainly, but I’ve known him for years and I can’t imagine-”
“He wasn’t confused.”
“These things are usually simpler than they look, in my experience-”
“Mr. Patterson.” I close my eyes. “I recently found out my husband has been having an affair for over a year. I found out on my honeymoon. He told the other woman, in writing, that I would never know. So with respect, I don’t need you to imagine what he’s capable of. I’ve read it in his own words.”
Another silence. Longer this time. When he speaks again, some of the family friend has drained out of his voice.
“I see.”
“He wasn’t confused. He was lying on purpose. And you calling me directly just ruined whatever he was building.” My hand is shaking against the railing. “How much is the inheritance?”
He tells me the number.
I have to hear it twice, because the first time it doesn’t sound like money. It sounds like a fake thing, a lottery-commercial thing, a number that doesn’t belong in the same sentence as my name.
“Ms. Brooks, given what you’re telling me, we should probably arrange a time to-”
“I’ll call your office when I’m back in the U.S. Don’t speak to Leo again. About any of it. Please.”
“Of course. Although I’m sure once you two sit down and talk this through-”
I hang up on him.
Then I stand on Noah’s terrace in the gray dawn and watch the pieces of the last year rearrange themselves into a shape I can finally see whole.
The texts weren’t about the honeymoon. When’s she leaving.
Soon. Then it’s just us. She’ll never know.
I read those words a hundred times and I thought they were talking about me leaving Thailand, about stolen weekends, about the ordinary geometry of an affair.
They weren’t. They were talking about the money.
About how long he had to keep the marriage alive before the estate paid out.
About when he could finally stop performing.
And the suite. God, the suite. I told him I wanted a divorce and I watched fear flash across his face, real fear, the only honest thing he showed me that whole night, and I thought it was fear of losing me.
Then the soft voice. We can work through this.
He wasn’t fighting for his wife. He was fighting for his investment.
An inheritance is mine alone - until I let it touch him.
A joint account, a house in both our names, our money, until a court couldn’t tell whose was whose.
A divorce before any of that and he walks away with nothing.
Stay married long enough to blur the line, and he walks away with half.
He didn’t cheat on me and get caught. He was running something, patiently, with her, and the wedding I planned into the ground was part of the paperwork.
The terrace door slides open behind me.
“Hey.” Noah’s voice is rough with sleep. “You disappeared.”
I don’t turn around right away. I need a second to fix my face, and I hate that I need it, and I do it anyway.
“Sorry. Didn’t want to wake you.”
“Who calls at six in the morning?” He comes up beside me at the railing, warm and rumpled, and his eyes move over my face the way they always do, like he’s reading something written there. “Melody. You’re white as a sheet.”
“Time difference confusion. Somebody’s assistant who can’t do math.” The lie comes out smooth and easy and I feel it land in my own chest like a stone. “It’s nothing. Insurance thing from the wedding. Deposits.”
“An insurance call made your hands shake?”
I look down. He’s right. I wrap them around the railing to stop it.
“I’m fine.”
“You said that at the bar, too. Night one.” He angles himself so he’s facing me, patient, unhurried. “You’re allowed to not be fine. You’re also allowed to not tell me why. But don’t tell me you’re fine when your knuckles are white.”
Everything in me leans toward him. That’s the terrible part.
Every single instinct I have wants to open my mouth and pour it all out, the letter, the lie, the number, the year of texts rewritten in one phone call, because he’s the person who makes heavy things lighter, and this thing is the heaviest one yet.
And that’s exactly why I can’t.
Because I trusted a man so completely that he ran a con through the middle of my wedding and I never felt a thing.
Because I have known Noah for two weeks, and last night, right before I fell asleep, he told me there are things about his life he hasn’t told me.
Complications. His word. Everyone in my life has a folder I haven’t opened yet.
I’m done handing out the contents of mine until I know what’s inside theirs.
So I make myself breathe. I make myself smile.
“You’re right. I’m not fine.” I let him have a slice of the truth, because the best lies are mostly true, and God, don’t I know exactly who taught me that.
“The call reminded me that home still exists. Lawyers, paperwork, Leo. All of it’s still sitting there waiting for me, and for a week I got to pretend it wasn’t. ”
Noah studies me for a long moment. I hold his gaze and hate every second of it.
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
I watch him decide whether to believe me, and I watch him choose to, or choose to let me have the lie, which might be the same thing and might not. He reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear, and his hand is warm, and I feel like the worst person alive.
“Come inside,” he says. “It’s barely light out.”
“In a minute.”
“Melody.” He hesitates at the door, one hand on the frame.
“Last night I said there were things I needed to tell you. Complications.” He takes a breath, and I can see him gathering himself, actually gathering himself, this man who is never nervous about anything.
“I meant it. And I think this morning I should-”
“Don’t.” It comes out sharper than I want. I soften it, put my hand flat on his chest, feel his heart going quicker than his face admits. “Not this morning. Please. I know I said morning, and I’m the one breaking the deal, but I can’t take in one more true thing today. I don’t have the room.”
“One more?” His eyes narrow slightly. “What was the first one?”
“Figure of speech.” Another lie. They’re getting easier, which frightens me more than anything Patterson said. “You can tell me another day. Just let me have the day first.”
He watches me a beat longer. Then he nods, slow, and kisses my forehead, and there’s something in the way his lips linger that feels like an apology for a thing I don’t know about yet.
“Then later,” he says. “I ordered breakfast. I’ll shower meanwhile.”
The door slides shut, and I’m alone with the ocean going pale gold at the edges, and the whole rotten truth I’m now carrying by myself.
I sit down on the terrace chair because my legs have opinions about standing.
I think about Leo in that suite, dripping wet, begging.
Don’t throw away four years over a few texts.
I think about him at that restaurant table, sweating, saying I love you with his mistress’s hand on his arm.
I thought he was weak. I thought he was a coward trying to save face.
He was protecting the deal.
And then the last piece slides into place, so cold and so obvious that I actually hear myself say it out loud to the empty morning.
“He’s never going to sign.”
The divorce papers. I’ve been telling everyone I’ll file the second I land, like it’s simple, like it’s a formality.
But money like that stays mine only as long as I keep it separate, and every day I’m still his wife is another day he can work it into ours - one joint account, one signature at a time - until a judge couldn’t untangle it.
A divorce now, before he blurs a single line, cuts him out clean, and he knows it, and he’s known it since before I did.
Every day he stalls, every excuse, every we can work through this, isn’t heartbreak.
It’s a countdown.
And somewhere back home, Leo is waiting for that money to land while I’m still legally his wife, and he has absolutely no idea that ten minutes ago, a family friend with bad timing handed me the whole game.
Through the glass, I hear the shower start. Noah is humming something, easy and unaware, a man with his own secret scheduled for tonight.
I pick up my phone, open my notes, and start writing everything down.