Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Brooke’s car sat in Annie’s driveway like a dare.
It was a silver Mercedes coupe with spotless windows and an interior the color of cream.
Brooke had bought it the year Nathan sold his first stock in Grisham Meridian, after three years of driving a dented Subaru and making sure everyone knew she had sacrificed as much as he had.
Nathan had called the car “long overdue.” Annie had thought it was beautiful and too expensive.
Brooke had looked at Annie over the hood and said, “Don’t worry. I earned it.”
At the time, Annie had laughed.
Now she stepped out of the cab and stood at the curb while the driver pulled away, leaving her in the damp quiet of the street. Their porch lamps had turned on with the early dusk. Through the front windows, she could see movement in the foyer.
Nathan opened the door before she reached the steps. His face was pale. “She let herself in,” he said.
Annie looked past him.
Brooke stood near the foot of the staircase with her coat still on and her handbag tucked in the crook of her arm.
She looked composed, but not calm. There was a difference.
Her mouth was set too tightly. Her eyes moved over Annie once, quick and assessing.
“You changed the alarm code,” Brooke said.
Annie came inside and set her bag on the console table. “Yes.”
Brooke glanced at Nathan. “When?”
“Today,” Nathan said.
Annie looked at him.
It was a small thing. Almost nothing. Still, after weeks of watching him drift toward Brooke’s version of reality, it struck Annie like a hand extended across a broken bridge.
Brooke saw it too. Her gaze sharpened.
“You’re locking me out now?” she asked him.
Nathan closed the front door. “You shouldn’t have had the code.”
“I’ve had the code for six years.”
“That doesn’t mean you should have.”
Brooke laughed once, quietly. “I see.”
“No,” Annie said. “You don’t. That’s why we’re here.”
Brooke turned toward her. “I’m not here to fight with you.”
“Then you came to the wrong house.”
Nathan moved slightly between them. The gesture was instinctive, protective, and Annie hated that she could not immediately tell whom he meant to protect.
Brooke noticed her noticing.
“I came because Nathan sent me a message that sounded like you had forced him to choose between his marriage and his oldest friendship,” Brooke said.
Nathan’s jaw tightened. “That isn’t what happened.”
“Isn’t it?” Brooke asked. “Because you told me you needed distance. That you and Annie had to focus on the marriage. You used her words, Nate.”
“They were mine.”
“No, they weren’t.”
Annie let that sit for a second.
Nathan’s face changed.
Brooke had made her first mistake. Maybe her first obvious one. In trying to claim ownership of Nathan’s mind, she had tipped her hand.
He looked at her. “You don’t get to tell me which words are mine.”
Brooke’s expression softened at once. “I’m sorry. I’m scared. You sounded unlike yourself.”
“Maybe I’ve been unlike myself for a while.”
Brooke flinched as if he had slapped her. A year ago, Annie would have believed that flinch. A month ago, maybe. Now she saw the precision of it, the way Brooke gave him visible pain to manage whenever his attention moved somewhere she did not want it to go.
“You said you wanted to talk,” Annie said. “Talk.”
Brooke’s eyes moved back to her. “Fine. Call off whatever investigation you started at work.”
Nathan turned toward Annie. “Investigation?”
Annie took out her phone and opened Maggie’s screenshots. “Dr. Beatrice Lane is Brooke’s cousin. She consults for Brooke’s family fund. Grisham Meridian is a founding supporter.”
Nathan went still.
Brooke sighed. “This is exactly what I mean.”
“No,” Annie said. “You don’t get to make a financial conflict and a family conflict sound like my personality flaw.”
“It isn’t a financial conflict. The company makes charitable donations. Bea is a consultant on a fund. She didn’t profit from your session.”
“You don’t know what she profited from.”
Brooke’s eyes flashed. “Be careful.”
Nathan looked at her sharply. “What does that mean?”
“It means Annie is making serious accusations because she had one therapy session she didn’t like.”
“She didn’t like it because you apparently knew about it before she came home,” Nathan said.
Brooke turned to him. “You told me she was going.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
He stared at her. “I didn’t know she was going until you texted me.”
The foyer seemed to narrow.
For once, Brooke had no immediate answer.
Annie watched Nathan replay the sequence. The missed assumption. Brooke’s question. His acceptance of it. The way she had made knowledge appear mutual after the fact.
“You texted me first,” Nathan said slowly. “You asked if Annie had checked in after her appointment.”
Brooke’s mouth parted, then closed.
“How did you know?” he asked.
Brooke looked away.
“Brooke.”
“Bea mentioned she had a new intake.”
Annie gave a short laugh. “A new intake.”
“She didn’t name you.”
“But you knew it was me.”
“I suspected.”
“And then you texted Nathan.”
Brooke lifted her chin. “Because I was worried about what you would do with it.”
“What I would do with my own private medical appointment?”
“It wasn’t medical.”
“It was therapy.”
“It was one conversation with my cousin after you spent months making Nathan afraid to come home.”
Nathan’s face tightened. “Don’t.”
Brooke rounded on him. “Don’t what? Tell the truth?
You used to call me from the driveway because you didn’t want to go inside.
You used to sit in your office until nine because you knew the minute you walked in, there would be another interrogation.
You used to say you felt like a defendant in your own house. ”
Annie looked at Nathan.
He did not deny it.
This betrayal had a different flavor when it came as confirmation rather than discovery. She had known they were unhappy. She had known he confided in Brooke. Knowing was not the same as hearing Brooke recite his misery as ammunition in their foyer.
Nathan turned toward Annie. “I said those things when I was angry.”
“You said them to her.”
“I know.”
Brooke seized the opening. “Because I was safe for him.”
“No,” Annie said. “Because you made yourself convenient.”
Brooke laughed, and the sound had no warmth. “You really believe I built your marriage’s problems from scratch. That must be comforting.”
“I believe you fed them.”
“You starved him first.”
Nathan stepped forward. “Enough.”
Brooke’s eyes filled then. Fast. Impressive.
“You’re letting her do it,” she said to him. “You’re letting her make me the villain so neither of you has to admit your marriage has been dying for a long time.”
Annie’s stomach turned.
There it was again. Their marriage was dying. Brooke used the word as if she had already attended the funeral.
Nathan looked at Brooke, and Annie could see the old pull. Obligation. History. Guilt. Brooke had integrated herself into every hard season of his life until refusing her felt like refusing his younger self.
Annie had to look away. On the console table, her phone lit up. Maggie. Annie picked it up. A text preview appeared.
Found divorce planner. Halpert connection. Sending now.
Annie opened the message. There was a link to a website for a boutique separation consultancy called ClearPath Transitions.
Elegant logo. Muted colors. Language about “compassionate uncoupling,” “asset-sensitive marital transition,” and “protecting high-net-worth individuals from conflict escalation.” Maggie had attached screenshots from the advisory board.
Dr. Beatrice Lane, PsyD.
Below that, in a testimonial section, was a quote from an anonymous business founder. Thank you for helping me prepare emotionally and logistically before I had the words to make the hardest decision of my life. No name. No photo.
But the next screenshot showed an archived version of the site from two years ago, before someone had scrubbed the metadata. The testimonial file name read: NatGrish_quote_final.
Nathan Grisham.
Annie stared at it so long the letters blurred.
Nathan saw her face. “What?”
She turned the phone toward him.
Brooke moved faster than he did. She stepped close enough to read the screen, then went completely still.
Nathan took the phone from Annie. He read the first screenshot. Then the second. “What is this?” he asked.
Brooke’s voice was very quiet. “That’s not what you think.”
Annie closed her eyes for one second. Of course.
Nathan looked at her. “Did I give a testimonial to a divorce planner?”
“No,” Brooke said quickly. “No. You didn’t. Not knowingly.”
His head turned. “What does that mean?”
Brooke pressed her lips together.
Annie watched the blood drain from Nathan’s face as the answer began assembling itself without Brooke’s help.
He said her name softly, dangerously. “What did you do?”
Brooke set her handbag on the small bench near the stairs, as if freeing her hands would help her regain control. “Two years ago, you were in a bad place.”
Annie felt the room tilt.
Two years ago had been the first failed IVF cycle.
The worst winter of their marriage. Nathan had stopped sleeping.
Annie had cried in the laundry room because she could not bear the sight of another sympathy card from the clinic.
Brooke had started coming over more often with soup, wine, articles, gentle texts, invitations Nathan accepted when Annie was too tired to object.
“I was helping you think through options,” Brooke said.
“Divorce options?” Nathan asked.
“Separation. Contingencies. You were miserable.”
“I don’t remember contacting a divorce consultant.”
“You didn’t contact them. I did.”
Annie’s heart beat once, hard.
Nathan stared at Brooke. “You did what?”
“I asked questions. Informally. For you.”
“For me.”
“You needed information.”
“I needed a friend.”
“I was being one.”
“No,” he said. The word came out low, almost unfamiliar.
Brooke looked startled.
Nathan held up the phone. “You gave them a quote using my initials?”
“It was anonymized.”
“That’s not an answer.”