Claire looked at me, and something in her expression almost resembled pity.

I hated that more than anger.

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

Daniel sighed.

“Ask your mother why your father paid me to disappear.”

The call ended.

No one moved.

The office felt smaller than before.

The air smelled like paper, dust, Claire’s perfume, and the metallic heat of the desk lamp that had been on too long.

Evan lowered the phone slowly.

Claire sat down in the chair by the window.

Not dramatically.

Not as if fainting.

She sat like someone whose legs had finally stopped cooperating.

I wanted to ask a hundred questions.

Why did Daniel know my father? Why did Claire know him? Why had she been working with him? Why did a property document about my “death” lead back to a man my father had supposedly paid to disappear?

But one question came out first.

“How long have you known him?”

Claire looked at the carpet.

“Two years.”

That was a lie.

I knew because she answered too quickly.

“Try again.”

She closed her eyes.

“Four.”

That was closer.

We’d been married five years.

My chest tightened.

“Before the wedding?”

She didn’t answer.

The silence did.

Evan sat on the edge of the desk, suddenly looking like a man who’d wandered into the wrong life and found himself locked inside.

“I need to go to the police,” he said.

Claire laughed bitterly.

“You think this is a police story?”

He looked at her.

“You faked a death certificate.”

“It was never officially accepted.”

“You forged signatures.”

“You don’t know what those signatures were for.”

“You told me your husband was dead.”

“And you believed me because it made you feel important.”

His face reddened.

I raised a hand.

“Enough.”

They both went quiet.

That surprised me.

Maybe I sounded different.

Maybe I was different.

I’d spent years being measured, reasonable—the husband who waited until the room cooled before speaking. Claire used to praise that when it benefited her. “Mason is calm,” she’d tell people. “He doesn’t do drama.”

What she meant was that I was easy to delay.

Not tonight.

I picked up the binder and the county notice.

“I’m calling my mother.”

Claire stood immediately.