Chapter 8 - The Living Man
I found Martin in a Vermont repair shop behind a hardware store. He sat beneath a fluorescent lamp, changing the clasp on an elderly woman's watch.
He looked up when the doorbell rang. For a moment neither of us spoke.
“Emma,” he said.
His voice wasn't the voice I remembered from childhood. It was lower, scratched around the edges. But when he put down the watch, he did it with the same odd care: left hand flat, right hand hovering until the tools stopped moving.
“You're alive.”
He nodded, as if I had told him rain was coming.
“I thought your mother might tell you eventually.”
“She told me you died.”
Pain crossed his face. It didn't stay there long enough to become an apology.
“I asked about you. She made contact difficult.”
“I'm twenty-eight. You could have found a way to call me.”
“I didn't want to hurt you.”
“That's what you chose instead?”
He looked down. The silence felt familiar; I had heard Nathan use it whenever a question required a truthful answer.
After the customer left, Martin offered me tea in a paper cup. I didn't accept. He explained that Mother had forced him out after a dispute over a sale he considered necessary. His designs remained in the company; his name disappeared from its publicity. He described the years afterward as exile.
“Who paid for you to come back?” I asked.
“Nobody bought me, if that's what you're asking.”
“Did you meet Nathan before we married?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know who you were?”
“Yes.”
My hands began shaking. “And you let me marry him without telling me?”
“I thought he was a good man for you. Ambitious. Capable of holding the business together.”
“He hit me.”
Martin's face changed. “I didn't know.”
I showed him the photographs of my cheek. He studied them with an intensity that almost looked like love.
“Then he has to answer for that,” he said.
“Did you help him prepare a document with my signature?”
He leaned away. “You should talk to your lawyer about documents.”
I had driven four hours imagining that seeing him would resolve something. Instead I realized he already knew I had legal counsel and had practiced how to avoid my questions.
As I left, he called after me.
May you like
“Emma, Friday's deal is the only way to keep the company from going under.”
He hadn't asked whether I was safe or happy. He had asked me to approve a sale.
