Chapter 7—Simon #2
I still don’t know whether they’re protecting appearances or if the distinction between wife and mistress matters to the trust itself. I’d bet it does and want to know.
“How far along are you?” I ask Charla.
Tate watches me again.
“Eleven weeks.” Charla rests her fingertips against her stomach with the comfortable familiarity of someone who has answered the question before.
“Early days.”
“We’ve been careful about announcing it,” Tate says.
The we matters.
He isn’t standing beside Charla while she lies independently. They’re doing this together.
The older woman smiles at them. “Judith wanted to announce it the minute she heard.”
“I’m shocked she restrained herself,” I say with a kind smile.
Tate laughs. Charla does too, though she watches me over the rim of her glass.
I could keep pushing, but that would be a mistake. I’ve learned enough from the public performance to know Tate and Charla are presenting her as Christa intentionally. The family believes Christa is eleven weeks pregnant with Tate’s son. The pregnancy matters to a succession provision.
Monday, after being served, Tate suddenly needed Christa to remain married to him for thirty days.
I can ask Charla why once she doesn’t have an audience.
Walter reappears several yards away and waves his iPad at me.
Apparently, the drainage crisis isn’t over.
“I should rescue Walter from himself.” I nod to the older couple, then look at Tate. “Good seeing you.”
Tate gives me a curt nod.
Charla’s expression says she knows this isn’t finished.
I walk away anyway.
Walter has found another photograph by the time I reach him. “You missed the retaining wall.”
“I’ve been devastated.”
He swipes to it.
I look at the photograph because I suddenly have an excellent reason to remain in the room.
For the next fifteen minutes, I let Walter explain grading, drainage, and what appears to be the complete biography of the seventh green while I watch Tate and Charla through reflections in the club’s glass doors and the occasional direct glance.
Charla doesn’t behave like a sister-in-law accompanying Tate to an event. She behaves like his wife.
She knows the people who approach them. She accepts congratulations without hesitation. Twice, Tate places his hand on her lower back to guide her through a group. When an elderly man asks if they’ve chosen names, Charla laughs and says they’re still arguing.
Tate joins the conversation without correcting her.
Another couple stops beside them, and the woman touches Charla’s arm before pointing toward her stomach. Charla smiles and answers whatever question she asks.
They’ve done this before. The realization irritates me more than it should.
Walter finally exhausts the drainage subject. I congratulate him on the continued existence of the golf course and start toward the lobby.
I make it halfway there before Charla follows. “Simon.”
I stop near the entrance to a side corridor and turn.
She approaches quickly but slows before reaching me, probably remembering there are still people around. “We need to talk.”
I glance toward the terrace. Tate is speaking with Bernard now, his attention divided between his father and us. “I doubt he’ll enjoy that.”
“Two minutes.”
Her usual flirtation is gone. For once, she’s speaking to me without treating the conversation as an audition.
I indicate an open alcove off the corridor. “Fine.”
Charla walks ahead of me. I remain several feet away when we stop. The alcove gives us enough privacy to speak quietly without creating a different kind of story for anyone passing.
She folds her arms. “This is complicated.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“You don’t understand what’s happening.”
I look back toward the room where she just accepted congratulations on her sister’s pregnancy. “I understand you’re sleeping with your sister’s husband.”
She flinches and immediately checks the corridor. “Keep your voice down.”
“I’m speaking quietly.”
“People could hear you.”
I sneer. “That concern arrived late.”
Her expression hardens. “You don’t know anything about their marriage.”
“I know Christa filed for divorce Monday.”
Charla looks at me sharply. “She told you that?”
“Yesterday.”
She looks stunned. She obviously didn’t know.
I watch her. “Did Tate tell you?”
“He didn’t.”
“Did Christa?”
Charla hesitates. She clearly didn’t either. That seems to hurt Charla’s feelings, though she’s sleeping with Christa’s husband.
She hugs her arms closer. “I knew she was thinking about leaving.”
“Thinking about leaving and filing a petition are different things.”
“She told me she’d hired an attorney.”
Christa told me that too, along with the fact that Charla encouraged her to stay. Yesterday, I interpreted it as an ordinary sister pushing for reconciliation.
Now I’m looking at the reason. “You knew she was preparing to divorce him while you were sleeping with him.”
Charla looks toward the corridor. “You don’t understand.”
“You’ve said that already.”
“They’ve been unhappy for years.” She lifts her chin. “Christa doesn’t even want his life. She hates the family obligations, the trust, all of it. She was already leaving.”
I remember Christa telling me Charla thought she was quitting too soon. “Then why did you try to talk her out of it?”
Charla’s composure slips. “I wasn’t trying to talk her out of anything.”
“She believes you were.”
“I told her not to make a permanent decision while she was angry.”
I study her. “Tate asked her for thirty days.”
She looks away before meeting my eyes again.
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
I curl my lip. “You reacted like you do.”
Charla releases a breath through her nose. “You’re reading too much into everything.”
“Perhaps.” I glance toward the terrace. “Why thirty days?”
“I told you I don’t know.”
I don’t believe her, but pressing the same point won’t improve the answer. “How long have you been sleeping with him?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You’re right.” I take out my phone.
Alarm replaces irritation. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“You can’t tell her.”
I look at Charla.
She steps closer before stopping herself. “Please. Tate needs time to explain.”
I keep holding the phone. “Tate had time to explain Monday.”
“He was blindsided by the filing.”
“So was Christa when he spent three years blaming her for not getting pregnant and opened it for discussion over dinner with his family.”
Charla’s mouth hardens. “That’s between them.”
I glance toward the room. “You’re eleven weeks pregnant.”
She reaches toward her abdomen before lowering her hand. “Yes.”
“Tate believes the baby is his.”
She looks at me sharply.
The reaction is wrong enough that I wait.
“He does,” she says. “The baby is his son.” She tosses her hair and glares at me too quickly.
I’ve watched Charla manufacture confidence for years. She can make an unwanted invitation sound inevitable and a social mistake sound intentional. Fear makes her less convincing.
I don’t push. Christa has enough coming toward her without my inventing a paternity problem from one strange reaction. “Why are you pretending to be Christa?”
Charla’s expression closes. “I’m not.”
I look at her.
She rolls her eyes. “Fine. His family thinks I’m Christa.”
“They don’t merely think it. You corrected me when I used your actual name, then spent the next fifteen minutes answering questions about your sister’s supposed pregnancy.”
She waves a hand. “It’s temporary.”
“What happens when temporary ends?”
She looks past me. “We’ll deal with that.”
“We.”
She hears the emphasis and scowls. “The trust has requirements. Bernard was already pushing Tate about succession. If everyone knows the baby was conceived outside the marriage, it creates problems.”
“For Tate.”
“Yes.” The answer comes without embarrassment.
I think about Monday’s divorce petition. “Does Christa being divorced from him create problems too?”
Charla doesn’t answer.
“That’s why he wants thirty days.”
“I don’t know the legal details.” She won’t meet my eyes though.
“You know enough to spend an afternoon pretending to be your sister.”
She sounds offended. “I’m not signing documents.”
“That is a remarkably low standard.”
Her eyes flash. “You don’t understand the structure.”
“I understand that Tate was served Monday, asked his wife to delay the divorce for exactly thirty days, and two days later, you’re at his club pretending to be his pregnant wife so his family believes he’s produced the heir they need.”
Charla looks away.
I don’t know the exact trust language, and I won’t pretend I do. I know enough about family holding companies and succession provisions to recognize people arranging appearances around a legal condition.
“Does Bernard know you’re Charla?”
“No.”
“Judith?”
“No.”
“Celeste?”
Charla takes a second before answering. “I haven’t been around her as Christa.”
That matters. Christa likes Celeste. From what she told me yesterday, Celeste was the only Meade at Saturday’s dinner who defended her. She would probably recognize the subterfuge within minutes.
“Anyone else in Tate’s family?”
“Tate knows.”
I laugh without humor.
“Simon, please.” Charla lowers her voice. “This doesn’t involve you.”
“You’ve dragged Christa into whatever mess this is, so yes, it does.”
For years, Charla’s interest in me has been irritating but mostly harmless.
She ignores social boundaries, pursues too hard, and hears rejection as an invitation to revise her approach.
I’ve changed seats at dinners, left parties through secondary exits, and once pretended to receive an urgent call from Singapore at eleven in the morning because she trapped me beside a swimming pool.
Apparently, none of that prepared her for the possibility that my lack of interest was specific to her. She straightens. “You like Christa.”
I don’t answer.
Disbelief replaces some of her panic. “You actually like her.”
I keep my expression neutral. “That’s irrelevant.”
“She’s still married.”
I stare at her.
Charla winces. “That was poorly phrased.”
“Spectacularly.”
She turns away for a second before facing me again. “You barely know her.”
“I know her well enough to tell you apart.”