PART 4
Ashley looked at me.
“How long?”
“Twenty-six years.”
Her eyes widened.
“No.”
I nodded.
“Twenty-six.”
She looked at Dale again.
He finally spoke.
“Ashley, listen to me.”
She held up her hand.
“No.”
“Ashley—”
“No.”
Her voice broke.
“You told me your wife was living with her sister.”
I said quietly, “My sister lives in Atlanta.”
Ashley turned toward me.
“She’s real?”
“Yes.”
“She knows?”
“My sister knows I’m married.”
Ashley looked sick.
Then her eyes fell on the folder again.
“What is that?”
I turned the document around so she could see it.
“Apparently, your boyfriend wanted to put approximately four hundred thousand dollars of business debt into my name.”
Ashley stared.
“What?”
Dale stepped forward.
“That’s not what it is.”
I pointed to the second page.
“Equipment loans.”
Third page.
“Back taxes.”
Fourth page.
“Personal guarantee.”
Then I looked at him.
“And this one transfers the boat account.”
Ashley looked at him.
“The boat account?”
Dale’s expression hardened.
“You don’t understand business.”
She stared at him.
“You told me that account was ours.”
“It is.”
“You said it had four hundred thousand dollars.”
“It fluctuates.”
“So does your story.”
Dale’s face turned red.
I had never seen him look so frightened.
Not even when the roof collapsed on one of his biggest job sites eight years earlier.
He had always been the man who knew what to do.
The man who had an answer.
The man who told me not to worry.
Now he had nothing.
Except lies.
And he had run out of places to put them.
From behind the curtain came a cough.
Patrice stepped into view.
Dale looked at her.
Then at me.
“Who is that?”
I smiled.
“My attorney.”
His face went completely pale.
Patrice held up her phone.
“Hello, Mr. Harris.”
Dale stared.
“You recorded me?”
“I recorded nothing that wasn’t said in a public-facing business conversation,” she replied calmly. “But I suggest you stop talking until you’ve spoken with your own counsel.”
Dale looked at me.
“You planned this.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
I pushed the folder toward him.
“You planned this.”
He didn’t touch it.
Patrice walked over.
“Carol, don’t give him the original.”
I immediately pulled it back.
Dale’s eyes narrowed.
“Carol, we’re married.”
I looked at him.
“That sentence used to mean something.”
He flinched.
Ashley was crying now.
Not loudly.
Just tears rolling down her cheeks while she stared at the man she’d believed she was going to marry.
“Did you ever love me?” she whispered.
Dale looked at her.
“Ashley…”
“Don’t.”
She wiped her face.
“Just answer me.”
He said nothing.
She nodded slowly.
“That answers it.”
Then she looked at me.
“I am so sorry.”
I believed her.
Because for the first time since she had entered my salon months earlier, she wasn’t trying to win anything.
She was just discovering she’d been lied to too.
I picked up my appointment book.
The little black book I’d kept hidden beneath towels for months.
I opened it.
“Would you like to know something, Ashley?”
She nodded.
I turned the book around.
Every Thursday.
Every visit.
Every statement.
Every dollar amount.
The condo.
The boat.
The account.
The ring.
The supposed divorce.
The supposed separation.
The debt.
Her face changed as she read.
“You wrote all this down?”
“Every word.”
She looked at Dale.
“You told me she never paid attention.”
I closed the book.
“She paid attention.”
Patrice took the folder.
“Carol, we’re done here.”
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