Chapter 8—Christa
I’VE SPENT SIX WEEKS trying to leave my husband without hurting him. That seems embarrassingly generous now.
Simon watches me from the other side of my desk while I reach for my phone. He doesn’t ask what I’m doing or suggest I wait until I’ve had time to process what he told me. I’m grateful for both.
I call Jai. She answers with, “Please tell me Tate hasn’t found a new reason to need thirty days.”
“He has.” I turn away from Simon and stare at the row of sample finishes on the far wall because they’re easier to look at than his sympathy.
The humor disappears from Jai’s voice. “What happened?”
“My sister is pregnant. Eleven weeks.” I force the rest out before I can find a reason to soften it. “Tate believes the baby is his.”
Silence stretches through the phone. When I look at Simon again, he’s still standing where he was when I got up, giving me room without seeming distant.
Jai finally speaks. “When you say Tate believes the baby is his, are you telling me they’re having an affair?”
“Yes.”
She makes a disgusted sound. “Does Charla admit that?”
“She admitted enough to Simon that there’s no question.” I glance at him reflexively. “He’s here.”
“Good. Don’t let him leave yet.”
Simon raises his eyebrows when I relay that. “I wasn’t planning to run.”
Despite everything, I almost smile.
“Start at the beginning,” Jai says. “Slowly.”
I put the phone on speaker and set it on my desk. “Simon was at Bellweather today. Charla was there with Tate.”
“Together publicly?”
“Worse.” Saying it makes the insanity expand again. “She was pretending to be me.”
Jai doesn’t answer immediately.
Simon sits and rests his forearms on his thighs. “People were calling her Christa. Tate knew they believed she was Christa and supported it.”
“How do you know it was intentional?” Jai asks.
“I called her Charla in front of Tate and another couple.” Simon’s mouth flattens as he remembers it. “The couple looked confused. Tate glared at me. Charla immediately claimed I’d mistaken her for Christa, then kept presenting herself as Christa.”
“Did Tate correct anyone?”
“No.” Simon wrinkles his nose with clear disgust. “Neither did Charla. She accepted congratulations on the pregnancy as Christa.”
Jai inhales raggedly, then lets it out just as hard. “I have several new questions, and I’m trying to decide which one is least alarming.”
“There’s a trust,” I say. “Something archaic and linked to a male heir, like an entail straight from Jane Austen.”
Simon looks confused, but Jai obviously gets it. “I thought that sort of thing mostly belonged in fiction, like Pride and Prejudice.”
“Not to the Meade relics. The next male Meade heir changes the voting arrangement.”
Jai sighs. “I knew there were succession provisions, but I never dug into them because you have no children with him. I don’t have the trust instrument because it isn’t marital property in the ordinary sense, and you specifically instructed me not to pursue Tate’s family assets.”
That instruction belongs to a woman who thought her biggest problem was getting divorced without becoming vindictive. I barely recognize her.
“Charla told Simon the trust has requirements,” I say. “She said if everyone knows the baby was conceived outside the marriage, it creates problems.”
Jai’s tone sharpens. “Exact wording matters. Simon?”
He repeats the exchange as closely as he can. Charla said the trust had requirements. Bernard was pushing Tate about succession. If everyone knew the baby had been conceived outside the marriage, it created problems.
Jai asks, “Did she say the child has to be born to Tate’s wife?”
“No.” Simon shakes his head. “She said it creates problems if everyone knows the baby was conceived outside the marriage. When I asked whether Christa divorcing Tate created problems too, she wouldn’t answer.”
“Then we don’t assume anything beyond that until I have the trust language.”
I pick up the phone and take it off speaker. “Tate asked me for thirty days. Two days after that, I find out he’s using my identity for whatever he’s doing with her baby.”
“That’s enough to make the timing suspicious,” Jai says. “It doesn’t tell us why yet.”
“My husband spent Saturday night letting his mother discuss my inability to conceive in front of his family while he knew my sister was pregnant.” I pace the narrow space between my desk and the window. “My sister knew I’d hired you and tried to convince me not to leave.”
“I understand both.”
“Then you understand why I’m finished being reasonable.”
Six weeks ago, I sat in her office and told her I didn’t want Tate’s money. I didn’t want investigators. I didn’t want a fight. I wanted my own assets, my studio untouched, and the marriage ended with as little damage as possible.
I wanted civilized. That’s no longer my goal.
Jai clears her throat. “Tell me what you want.”
I look around my office. My name is on the door, and my diplomas are on the wall.
The studio exists because I built it, one client and one referral at a time, while Tate called it my hobby and his mother worried solvents would ruin my manicure.
He doesn’t get to use any of it as evidence that I was too small to fight him.
“Stop being civilized.” My voice doesn’t shake. “Be ruthless.”
Simon looks at me.
Jai waits a beat. “Lawfully ruthless?”
“Tempting, but I’m paying you too much for the other kind. Nothing he can use against me.”
“Excellent answer.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It lasts only a moment, but it helps.
“Then my instructions change. We preserve everything. Tate’s communications, Charla’s communications, anything related to the pregnancy, any occasion when someone represented Charla as you, and anything involving the trust. We determine exactly what happens in thirty days.”
I nod even though she can’t see it. “Can you get the trust?”
“I can demand anything relevant to the divorce and Tate’s financial disclosures. Whether that gets me the entire instrument depends on how it’s structured. I can also start asking questions I didn’t ask when my client was insisting I leave the Meade family holdings alone.”
“Your client has reconsidered.”
“Thankfully. Now I can really impress you.”
I put the phone back on speaker and turn toward Simon. “Can Walter verify what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t contact him yet,” Jai says immediately.
Simon nods before remembering she can’t see him. “Understood.”
“Write down everything you remember from today while it’s fresh. Names if you know them, exact statements where possible, approximate times, and who was present.”
Simon settles farther back in the chair. “I can do that.”
“Don’t investigate the trust yourself.”
His eyebrows rise. “I wasn’t planning to.”
I give him a look.
He sits back, offended. “I wasn’t.”
I arch a brow. “You researched nineteenth-century furniture conservation because you wanted an excuse to see me.”
Jai says, “I’m sorry. What?”
“Nothing relevant.”
Simon shifts in the chair. “I object to the word excuse.”
I stare at him.
“Respectable pretext.”
The laugh that comes out of me this time is dangerously close to hysteria.
Jai waits until I stop. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that until your divorce is further along.”
“Thank you.”
“One more thing.” Her tone turns serious again. “Do you have any reason to believe Charla has used your identity anywhere besides these social appearances?”
My answer comes automatically. “No.” Then I remember enough small things that the word catches in my throat.
Simon sees it. “What?”
“Charla borrows things.”
Jai asks, “What kind of things?”
“Clothes. Jewelry. Reservations sometimes. Stupid twin stuff.” I rub my thumb over the edge of my phone. “She used my driver’s license once when we were twenty-two.”
“Why?”
“She lost hers before a flight. We were identical, and she knew TSA wouldn’t notice.”
Jai pauses. “Anything more recent?”
“I don’t know.” That answer bothers me more than it should.
Charla has spent our entire lives treating the line between mine and hers as negotiable.
A dress was a dress. A lipstick was a lipstick.
When we were teenagers, she borrowed my name to get rid of boys or get into places where she’d been banned.
I complained, she charmed me, and eventually, it became another story people told about the Kaffey twins.
Even Simon knows one. At a high-school awards dinner, Charla switched places with me because she wanted to avoid a boy. I laughed when I told him about it.
I’m not laughing now.
“Check your credit reports,” Jai says. “Don’t dispute anything yet. Send me anything you don’t recognize.”
A chill moves over my skin. “You think she’s stolen my identity?”
“I think your identical twin spent today publicly impersonating you while participating in a scheme involving your husband’s family trust.” Jai’s tone remains steady even though the words are ugly. “I’m no longer comfortable assuming she recognizes ordinary boundaries.”
Neither am I. “I’ll check.”
“Today.”
“Yes.”
Jai gives me a few more instructions, including changing passwords Charla might know and preserving every message instead of blocking either of them. That last one disappoints me. “I was looking forward to blocking Tate.”
“You may mute him. You don’t have to reply or even read them. Just screenshot everything, and don’t delete it.”
“You’re very generous.”
“I try.” Papers rustle on Jai’s end. “I’ll call as soon as I know what the thirty days could mean. Don’t contact Tate, Charla, Bernard, or anyone else in that family until we talk again.”
I end the call and remain beside my desk with the phone in my hand. Simon hasn’t moved. “You can say it.”
He looks wary. “Say what?”
“That you told me Charla doesn’t understand boundaries.”
“I believe my exact complaint was that she treats rejection as a scheduling problem.” He stands, but his expression has lost the humor. “I’m not interested in being right about this.”