Chapter 20 - Dolores Comes HomeDolores returned to the mansion once.
Not to live.
To collect personal belongings under a supervised arrangement.
Leonard chose to be present.
Nora advised against it.
He insisted.
Sadie stayed at the hotel with Maribel.
Dolores walked through the foyer slowly.
She stopped beneath the chandelier.
“You changed the locks.”
“Yes.”
“Forty years.”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Does correcting the number make this easier?”
“No.”
She looked toward the staircase.
“I chose half of what’s in this house.”
“You chose furniture.”
“I chose a life.”
Leonard watched her.
Dolores seemed smaller.
Not physically.
The performance of certainty had weakened.
She entered her dressing room.
An officer remained nearby.
Dolores packed jewelry permitted under the temporary property agreement.
Clothes.
Photographs.
She picked up one framed image of Eliza at seventeen.
Her hand shook.
“You think I hated her.”
Leonard said nothing.
“I didn't.”
“You hurt her.”
“I loved her.”
“Those facts can coexist.”
Dolores turned.
“You learned that from a therapist?”
“I learned it from you.”
Her face tightened.
She set down the photograph.
“I spent my whole marriage being second.”
“To whom?”
“Your company.”
Leonard waited.
“Then Eliza.”
“Our daughter.”
“She knew exactly how to pull you toward her.”
“She was a child.”
“She stopped being a child.”
“So did you.”
Dolores looked away.
“I wanted security.”
“You had it.”
“I wanted something that was mine.”
“You had property. Investments. Accounts.”
“Things you gave me.”
Leonard finally understood the distinction in her mind.
Anything received from him remained proof of dependence.
She wanted control to prove equality.
“You could have built something.”
Dolores laughed bitterly.
“When? Between hosting your executives and raising your daughter and moving for your acquisitions?”
“You could have told me you felt trapped.”
“I did.”
“No. You told me you wanted more.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
Dolores closed her suitcase.
“You won't understand.”
“Probably not.”
She glanced toward the basement.
“Does Sadie hate me?”
Leonard did not answer immediately.
“She is afraid of you.”
Pain crossed Dolores’s face.
For once, it looked genuine.
“I never meant for her to be afraid.”
Leonard stared.
“You dragged her by the hair.”
Dolores looked down.
“You threatened to leave her in a freezer.”
“She was never going to stay longer than thirty minutes.”
“You returned after fourteen.”
Her head snapped up.
He saw it.
She knew.
“There was a camera,” Leonard said.
Dolores’s face collapsed.
“You stood outside the door.”
No answer.
“You heard her.”
Dolores began crying.
“I was angry.”
“Fourteen minutes later?”
“She had opened Eliza’s drawer. She knew about Gavin. She kept looking at me like Eliza used to.”
“And that justified it?”
“No.”
The word was tiny.
Leonard had waited weeks to hear it.
It gave him nothing.
Dolores sat on the bed.
“I wanted her to stop looking at me like I was evil.”
Leonard whispered, “So you gave her proof.”
Dolores covered her face.
For a moment, he remembered the woman he married.
Twenty-nine.
Laughing in the rain outside a restaurant because their car would not start.
Holding newborn Eliza.
Sleeping beside him through his heart surgery.
Human beings did not become strangers simply because you discovered what else they were capable of.
That made betrayal harder.
Not easier.
Dolores looked up.
“Gavin never loved me.”
Leonard almost laughed.
“That is what you want to tell me?”
“He wanted access.”
“And you wanted him?”
“At first, I wanted someone who made me feel chosen.”
“You could have left me.”
“I didn't want to leave.”
“You wanted both.”
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised him.
She continued.
“Then it became money.”
“How much was enough?”
“I don't know.”
“Twenty-two million?”
Dolores flinched.
“You found the spreadsheet.”
“Yes.”
“It wasn't just mine.”
“No. But your name had the largest share.”
She wiped her face.
“Leonard, Gavin will blame everything on me.”
“You are blaming everything on him.”
“He forged Eliza’s signature.”
“And you used it.”
Silence.
Leonard stood.
“We are finished.”
Dolores looked around the room.
“You mean the marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Or everything?”
He thought of prosecutors.
Civil suits.
The company.
Sadie.
“I don't control everything.”
Her mouth trembled.
“Would Eliza have forgiven me?”
The question angered him.
“Do not ask me to make our dead daughter absolve you.”
Dolores lowered her eyes.
He left.
At the bottom of the stairs, an officer called him back.
“Mr. Ashcroft.”
Leonard turned.
Dolores stood at the top.
She held a small envelope.
“I found this behind the photograph.”
She came down slowly and handed it to him.
Leonard opened it.
Inside was a note.
Eliza’s handwriting.
Only three lines.
Mom, if you found this before Dad did, then you still have time.
Stop. Tell him everything.
Come back before you become someone Sadie has to survive.
Leonard read it twice.
Dolores began sobbing behind him.
The note had been waiting in her room for eighteen months.
May you like
She had found it too late.
Or perhaps exactly when she deserved to.
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