Chapter 6 - Jessica’s Confession
The corridor outside the Grand Terrace Room smelled of damp rain and polished stone.
While Margaret remained inside to oversee the final removal of the catering equipment and ensure Abigail secured all security footage from the morning, I walked toward the ladies' lounge to wash my face. The weight of the afternoon was pulling at my spine, an exhaustion so profound that each step felt like wading through wet cement.
When I pushed open the frosted glass door, I found Jessica Moore sitting on the plush velvet ottoman beneath the brass-framed mirrors.
Her heels were discarded on the floor beside her. Her swollen feet were bare, her fingers intertwined tightly across the mound of her belly. When the door clicked shut, she looked up, her red-rimmed eyes widening in sudden apprehension. She made a tentative move to stand.
"Don't get up," I said quietly, leaning against the vanity counter for support. "Your ankles are swollen. Mine are too."
Jessica hesitated, then sank back down onto the velvet seat. She pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and twisted it into tight ribbons between her fingers.
"I didn't know, Caroline," she said, her voice shaking so hard the words tumbled over each other. "I swear to God, on my life, on this baby’s life, I didn't know she was carrying your family's money. I didn't know you were still living in the house."
"You knew he was married, Jessica," I said evenly. There was no rage left in my voice, only an infinite, barren clarity. "Even if he told you we were separated. A separation is not an ending. You let him parade you around his family before the ink was even dry on an imaginary petition."
"He told me you had already signed," Jessica whispered, a fresh tear carving a dark trail down her cheek. "Six months ago, he brought home a blue folder. It had court stamps on it. He said you were living off your family’s estate in Oregon, that you hated this town and hated his family, but you agreed to let him take the lead on the public announcement so his career wouldn't suffer."
She pulled her handbag onto her lap and unzipped the front pocket with trembling hands. She retrieved a folded, worn sheet of legal paper and held it out toward me.
I took it. It was a fabricated Settlement Agreement. The signature at the bottom read *Caroline Reed*—an amateurish, shaky forgery that didn't even match the handwriting on my driver's license. But to a twenty-four-year-old junior associate at a regional title company who was infatuated with a charming senior partner, it had been enough.
"He told me his mother was difficult, but that Emily loved me," Jessica continued, her head bowed in humiliation. "Emily took me shopping for maternity clothes three weeks ago. She told me Daniel was finally happy. She told me I was saving him."
A dry, bitter laugh escaped my throat. "Emily was saving herself. She owed forty thousand dollars to private lenders for a failed boutique in Lake Oswego. Daniel paid the minimums to keep her quiet, and she helped him construct his fantasy."
Jessica looked up at me, her gaze lingering on my stomach. "How far along are you?"
"Thirty-two weeks," I answered softly.
"I'm twenty-six," she whispered. "It's a boy."
"A boy," I repeated. The word settled heavily between us. My own ultrasound had revealed a girl—the daughter I had already named Clara, after my mother. Two children, fathered by the same man within months of each other, destined to bear the collateral damage of his cowardice.
"What are you going to do?" Jessica asked, her voice small, childlike.
"I am going to take my home back," I said. "I am going to file for divorce tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. And I am going to ensure that every single dollar Daniel Reed stole from my mother's estate is repaid with statutory interest."
Jessica swallowed hard. She reached down, slipped her swollen feet back into her low heels, and stood up with great effort. She smoothed the front of her pink dress—the dress chosen to match a theme that had belonged to me.
"I won't contest anything, Caroline," Jessica said, looking me straight in the eye for the first time. "If your lawyers need statements about the money he spent on my apartment deposit, or the gifts Emily accepted from him... I will give them the receipts. I will sign whatever affidavits you need."
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I looked at her closely. There was shame in her posture, but beneath it lay the beginning of a fierce, maternal self-preservation. She had realized, far sooner than I had, that staying attached to Daniel Reed was an anchor that would drag her and her child straight to the bottom of the river.
"Keep your receipts, Jessica," I said quietly, turning on the cold water faucet to rinse my hands. "You're going to need them for your own child support hearings."
