Chapter 9 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW THE PLAN
Celeste Rowan asked to speak with me the following morning.
Ava said no.
Then she said maybe.
Then she spent forty minutes speaking with Celeste's newly retained attorney before finally asking what I wanted.
I was sitting beside Noah when she called.
He had gained fourteen grams overnight.
Fourteen grams sounded ridiculous until you had a premature baby.
Then it sounded like victory.
"Do you want to hear her?" Ava asked.
I looked at Noah through the incubator wall.
"Yes."
"It may hurt."
"Everything already hurts."
Ava did not argue.
The call was arranged through counsel and recorded with everyone's consent.
Celeste appeared on a video screen from a conference room at her lawyer's office.
She looked nothing like the polished woman who had eaten at my table.
Her hair was pulled into a rough knot.
She wore no makeup.
Her eyes were swollen from crying.
For several seconds, she could not look at me.
I spoke first.
"Was the apartment for you and Carter?"
Celeste closed her eyes.
"No."
"Then why was it in your name?"
"Because Carter said he couldn't put it in his."
"Why?"
"He said there was going to be a custody dispute."
My stomach tightened.
"When did he say that?"
"Months ago."
"Before Noah was born."
"Yes."
Ava sat beside me, silent.
Celeste's attorney watched from the edge of the screen.
"What did Carter tell you about me?"
Celeste swallowed.
"That you were unstable."
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
"Of course."
"He said you had become paranoid during pregnancy."
"About what?"
"Money."
"Anything else?"
"He said you were hiding funds and talking about disappearing with the baby."
"I never said that."
"I know that now."
"You didn't know it when you helped him rent an apartment."
Celeste flinched.
"No."
"Did you sleep with my husband?"
Her lawyer shifted.
Ava said nothing.
Celeste finally looked directly at me.
"Once."
The answer was quieter than I expected.
It still cut.
"When?"
"Five months ago."
I did the math automatically.
I had been four months pregnant.
"At the firm retreat?"
Her eyes filled.
"Yes."
I remembered Carter coming home from that retreat with a bottle of expensive lotion he said the hotel gave everyone.
I remembered smelling perfume on his collar and convincing myself it belonged to a crowded elevator.
"Was that the only time?"
"Physically, yes."
"Emotionally?"
Celeste looked down.
"No."
Ava touched my arm once.
I did not need comfort.
I needed facts.
"Why did Fairmont pay you eighty thousand dollars?"
"Deposit, prepaid rent, furniture, and an emergency reserve."
"For an apartment Carter planned to use with Noah."
"Yes."
"After I was declared unfit."
Celeste's face crumpled.
"That is what he said."
I stared at her.
"And you believed him?"
"I believed enough of it."
"Why?"
She wiped her cheek.
"Because he showed me documents."
"What documents?"
"Your missed medical appointments."
I felt something cold spread through me.
"What else?"
"A letter to your employer saying you were resigning."
"I never wrote it."
"I know that now."
"What else?"
"Screenshots of messages where you supposedly said you hated being pregnant and wished the baby would disappear."
The room went silent.
I had never written anything remotely like that.
"Do you still have them?"
"Yes."
Ava leaned forward for the first time.
"Your attorney needs to preserve the original files and device."
Celeste's lawyer nodded.
"Already done."
I kept looking at Celeste.
"Why are you talking now?"
She gave me a broken little laugh.
"Because I watched the news."
"The news lies too."
"I know."
"So why?"
"Because Carter called me after the police searched your house."
Ava's posture changed.
"What did he say?"
Celeste looked toward her attorney.
He nodded.
"He told me to destroy the screenshots he had sent me."
My heart started pounding.
"Anything else?"
"He told me to empty the apartment."
"Anything else?"
She hesitated.
"He asked whether the second phone was still there."
Ava and I looked at each other.
"What second phone?"
Celeste rubbed both hands across her face.
"Carter kept a phone in the apartment."
"Why?"
"He said he didn't want certain client communications on his personal device."
"Where is it now?"
"I gave it to my attorney this morning."
Ava was already writing.
Celeste continued.
"I haven't unlocked it."
"Do you know the passcode?"
"No."
"Then why is it important?"
Celeste finally looked directly at me again.
"Because he used it every time he talked to his mother about you."
The call ended fifteen minutes later.
I felt emptied out.
Ava closed the laptop.
"Do you want me to say something comforting?"
"No."
"Good, because I am not especially talented at that."
I almost smiled.
"Do you think she's telling the truth?"
"I think she has reasons to minimize her own role."
"That wasn't my question."
"I think enough of what she said is verifiable that we should verify it before deciding what she is."
That was an answer my father would have liked.
At noon, Celeste's lawyer turned the phone over to investigators under an agreement protecting privileged material unrelated to the case.
The device was newer than expected.
Encrypted.
Locked.
But police did not need to break into it immediately.
The carrier records were enough to show months of contact.
Hundreds of calls and messages between the phone and Eleanor's number.
Dozens with Malcolm.
Several with Martin Vale, the trustee behind Fairmont.
And one number nobody recognized.
It appeared only nine times.
Each call lasted less than two minutes.
All nine occurred on days when one of my prenatal appointments was canceled, medication was redirected, or Carter's spreadsheet documented a new "incident."
Detective Ortiz traced the number.
It belonged to a private investigator named Nolan Briggs.
I had never heard of him.
Ava had.
"Domestic surveillance," she said.
"Background investigations."
"Sometimes litigation support."
I stared at her.
"He hired someone to follow me?"
"We don't know yet."
By three that afternoon, we knew.
Briggs's company had invoices.
Carter had paid him for fourteen days of surveillance over three months.
The invoices described me by a case number instead of a name.
SUBJECT B-17.
The reports included photographs of me leaving work.
Buying groceries.
Sitting in my car outside a coffee shop.
Walking into my obstetric clinic.
Visiting my sister.
One photograph showed me crying inside my car after an argument with Carter.
The caption read:
SUBJECT DISPLAYED EMOTIONAL DISTRESS FOR APPROXIMATELY 11 MINUTES.
I stared at that line longer than all the others.
Eleven minutes.
A stranger had timed my grief while my husband collected it as evidence.
"Why didn't the investigator ask questions?" I said.
Ava looked at the report.
"Private investigators are hired to observe, not diagnose marriages."
"He followed a pregnant woman for weeks."
"That by itself isn't necessarily illegal."
"It should feel illegal."
"Many things do."
Detective Ortiz called again at four.
Briggs had agreed to an interview.
He said Carter hired him through Fairmont to document suspected marital infidelity and possible child-custody concerns.
"Infidelity?"
I almost shouted the word.
"I was working twelve-hour shifts and coming home to cook for his mother."
Ortiz sounded tired.
"He gave Briggs the name of a male coworker and suggested you might be seeing him."
I knew exactly who.
Marcus Lee.
A sixty-year-old respiratory therapist with three grandchildren who brought homemade dumplings to work every Friday.
"That's insane."
"Briggs found no evidence of an affair."
"Obviously."
"But Carter continued paying him."
"For what?"
Ortiz paused.
"To document fatigue, appointments, and visits to your family."
The surveillance had never been about cheating.
It had been about constructing a version of me.
One photograph at a time.
One cancellation at a time.
One tired morning at a time.
By evening, the story Carter planned to tell a future court was clear.
Rebecca Hale was unstable.
Rebecca Hale was secretive with money.
Rebecca Hale neglected prenatal care.
Rebecca Hale was exhausted by work.
Rebecca Hale cried in parking lots.
Rebecca Hale wanted to run.
And Carter Hale was the organized, concerned father who had been documenting everything.
There was only one problem.
His documentation had started to document him instead.
At nine that night, Detective Ortiz called one final time.
The forensic lab had obtained access to part of the second phone through a cloud backup.
She could not disclose everything.
But she could tell me one recovered message had changed the case.
It was from Carter to Eleanor, sent six weeks before Noah was born.
I asked her to read it.
She did.
WHEN SHE FINALLY BREAKS, DO NOT COMFORT HER.
LET HER LOOK UNSTABLE.
Then came Eleanor's reply.
AND IF SHE DOESN'T BREAK?
May you like
Carter answered three minutes later.
THEN WE PUSH HARDER.
