Chapter 4
I did not sleep. I sat on Verane's porch steps until midnight, replaying the words on that phone screen until they stopped making sense as language and just became noise.
New witness has come forward regarding Monaco incident.
Monaco was two years of my life reduced to a single word that everyone treated like they already knew the ending. Maybe they did. I barely remembered most of that trip myself, which was its own kind of confession.
Verane's lawyer called first thing Monday morning. I was standing in Bay 7 with a torque wrench in my hand when Verane walked in, phone pressed to her ear, and waved me toward the small glass office in the corner without a word. That alone told me how serious this was. She never let me anywhere near that office.
"This is Isabella Abbey," Verane said, setting the phone on speaker on the desk between us. "She handles the custody filing. Isabella, Ransford's here."
"Good." The voice on the line was crisp, unbothered, the voice of someone who had delivered worse news than this before breakfast. "I'll keep this simple. A woman named Celeste Marchetti has come forward. She says she was on the yacht in Monaco the weekend Verane was in the hospital giving birth. She's willing to testify to what she saw."
My stomach dropped through the floor. "What did she see?"
"That's the question, isn't it." Isabella did not sound like she was enjoying this, exactly, but she also did not sound like she was going to soften it for me. "According to her statement, you were unconscious for most of it. Alcohol, possibly more than that. She says you didn't check your phone once in three days."
Verane did not look at me. She looked at the phone like it was the only safe place left in the room.
"I don't remember three days of my life," I said, and the words tasted like the truth even though I wished they didn't. "I've never denied that."
"The court doesn't care what you remember," Isabella said. "It cares what's on record. A firsthand witness puts a specific, ugly picture in front of a judge instead of a vague admission of a rough patch. That's the difference between a character flaw and a pattern of danger."
"So what happens now?"
"Now you get ahead of it." Her voice sharpened. "Ransford, I need you to write down everything you remember about that weekend, even the parts you're ashamed of. Especially those. If this witness testifies and you have no version of events on record, the judge only hears hers."
"I'll do it."
"Do it today." A pause, and when she spoke again her voice had shifted, aimed more at Verane than me. "Verane, I know this isn't what you wanted to deal with two weeks before the hearing. I'm sorry."
"It's fine," Verane said, in a voice that made it clear it was not fine at all.
The call ended. The office went quiet except for the hum of the shop outside the glass, engines and voices and a world that kept moving even though mine had just stopped.
"You didn't tell me someone was with us on that trip," Verane said finally. "A woman."
"There were a lot of people on that boat, Verane. I don't remember most of their names."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No." I sat down across from her, the desk between us like a wall neither of us had asked for. "It's supposed to be the truth. I was gone. I mean actually gone, not just absent. If she says I don't remember three days, she's not lying."
Verane was quiet for a long moment, turning a pen over and over in her hands like it was the only thing keeping them steady.
"Do you know what I keep thinking about?" she said finally. "Not the boat. Not her. I keep thinking about the fact that while all of that was happening, I was on a table screaming your name, and somewhere in the world you had no idea I existed anymore."
"Verane."
"I'm not finished." Her voice cracked right down the middle. "I built a whole life without you because I had to. And now every time I let myself believe you might actually be different, something like this shows up to remind me why I stopped believing in the first place."
"I can't undo Monaco."
"I know that." She finally looked at me, and her eyes were dry now, which somehow scared me more than tears would have. "But I need you to understand something, and I need you to hear it clearly. This isn't about whether I forgive you for the past. I might. Someday. This is about whether Mira gets to grow up with a father the court believes is safe. If this witness talks and the judge doesn't like what she hears, none of the last seventeen days matter. Not the job. Not the sandbox. None of it."
I did not have an answer for that. There wasn't one that would have made either of us feel better.
She stood, smoothing her coveralls, already pulling the mask back into place, the one she wore for the shop floor and the lawyers and everyone who was not allowed to see her scared.
"Write your statement," she said. "Today. I need to know exactly what we're walking into before Isabella does."
"I will."
She stopped at the door, her hand on the frame the same way it had been the night I met Mira, like she needed something solid to hold onto.
"Ransford. One more thing." Her voice dropped low enough that I had to lean in to catch it. "Celeste Marchetti isn't just a random witness. Isabella didn't say this part on the call, but I saw the message underneath it. Celeste used to work for your old sponsor. And two days ago, someone from that sponsor's office called my lawyer's firm first. Before Celeste ever came forward on her own."
I felt the floor tilt under me a second time that day.
"Someone sent her," I said slowly.
"Someone wants this fight to go a very specific way." Verane held my eyes for one long second, and for the first time since I'd walked back into her life, I saw something in her face that was not anger and was not distance.
It was fear, and it was not entirely for herself.
"Find out who," she said. "Before Monday runs out."