Chapter 16 - Florence's Side of the Glass
I did not visit Florence for three weeks.
She wrote eleven letters.
I read none.
Hannah read none.
Sam stored them.
Then Leo asked a question.
“Is Florence dead?”
We were eating breakfast.
Hannah froze.
I set down my coffee.
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“In jail.”
“Forever?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because she took me?”
“Yes.”
He thought.
“Uncle Marty took me too.”
“Yes.”
“Is he in jail?”
“Yes.”
Another thoughtful pause.
“Do bad people know they’re bad?”
Hannah looked at me.
I had no answer good enough for six.
“Sometimes.”
“What about when they do good stuff?”
“That doesn’t erase the bad stuff.”
“Does bad stuff erase good stuff?”
I stopped.
Children were infuriatingly efficient philosophers.
“No.”
Leo ate a piece of toast.
“Okay.”
That night, I opened Florence’s first letter.
Jonathan,
I am not asking you to forgive me.
If you ever forgive me quickly, I will know you still haven’t learned anything.
That was very Florence.
Sharp even from jail.
I kept reading.
She described her father.
Raymond.
How he stopped sleeping after losing the company.
How her mother hid overdue notices.
How Florence watched our company commercials on television and believed the smiling man named Jonathan Prescott had stolen their life.
Me.
She first met Martin because she contacted him after Raymond died.
That part contradicted Martin again.
According to Florence, Martin did not seek her out.
She sought him.
She planned to record him admitting what happened.
Instead, he lied.
Then paid her.
She took the money.
Not because she believed him.
Because she needed it.
Her mother was sick.
Debt remained.
Fifty thousand dollars felt like justice to a twenty-six-year-old who had none.
Then she learned Martin was still stealing.
At first, she blackmailed him.
He paid.
Then blackmail became partnership.
She created Northline.
He routed money.
She told herself every dollar was repayment.
Eventually, she stopped counting what her father had lost.
That was the line that mattered.
Eventually, she stopped counting.
Revenge had become profit.
Then Michael contacted her.
He showed her evidence that I had not known about Dawson.
She didn’t believe him.
So Michael showed her Caroline’s notes.
Not the notebook.
Photographs of pages he had taken years earlier from Hannah’s safe-deposit documents.
Florence finally understood.
I was not the man who destroyed her father knowingly.
I was the man who let Martin make decisions without checking.
A different sin.
Still a sin.
But not the one she had built her life around.
She tried to stop.
Martin threatened her.
Then she met me.
Not by accident.
She still allowed the introduction.
She expected to hate me.
Instead, I bored her.
That made me laugh.
Her exact words:
You talked about insulation for fifteen minutes.
I had spent twenty years imagining you as a monster, and you were worried about attic heat loss.
Then:
I should have walked away that night.
I didn't.
I wanted to see whether the man I hated existed somewhere inside you.
I stayed long enough to discover he didn't.
Then I stayed because I loved the man who did.
I closed the letter.
That sentence was crueler than if she had said everything was fake.
I opened the second.
She admitted using my trust to access files.
She admitted copying financial records.
She admitted helping Martin prepare the false medical narrative.
She claimed she originally intended only to force a settlement.
Then Martin wanted control.
She wanted money.
Their motives merged.
By the time she tried to back out, both had committed crimes.
The third letter concerned Hannah.
I almost stopped.
I read it anyway.
I envied her.
Not because she was your daughter.
Because she could fight with you and still know you loved her.
I never had that with my father after Prescott.
Everything in our house became about survival.
Hannah had something I thought money had stolen from me.
A safe parent.
So I tried to make you doubt her.
I stared at those lines for a long time.
There was no excuse attached.
That mattered.
Not enough.
But it mattered.
The final letter I read was about Leo.
I took him because Martin told me he planned to.
I could have called the police.
I didn't.
I thought I could still control the situation without exposing everything.
That was arrogance.
I scared him.
There is no version of the story where frightening that child becomes acceptable because I was afraid Martin would do worse.
I am sorry.
Not the kind of sorry that asks you to make me feel better.
The kind that has to live somewhere whether you forgive me or not.
I visited her the next day.
Not for closure.
Closure was a word people used when they wanted pain to behave.
I wanted answers.
Florence entered the interview room wearing county beige.
No diamond earrings.
No perfect hair.
No controlled elegance.
She sat.
We looked at each other through glass.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then I said, “Was any of it real?”
She closed her eyes.
“That’s the question I knew you’d ask.”
“Answer it.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s true.”
She looked at me.
“The first dinner was not real.”
“The second wasn’t.”
“The charity gala wasn’t.”
“When did it change?”
“When you burned the chicken.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“At your house.”
I remembered.
Our fourth date.
I tried to cook.
Failed spectacularly.
We ate cereal at midnight.
“You were embarrassed.”
She smiled faintly.
“And normal.”
I looked away.
“Did you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Did you plan to marry me?”
“Yes.”
“Even knowing the trust documents were false?”
She swallowed.
“I planned to stop Martin after the ceremony.”
I laughed.
“You expected me to believe that?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I told myself I could fix everything once I had access.”
“You drugged Hannah the morning of our wedding.”
Her eyes filled.
“I know.”
“That doesn’t sound like stopping.”
“No.”
Her voice broke.
“It sounds like panic.”
“Stop turning crimes into emotions.”
She flinched.
Good.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need that.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the woman I had planned to grow old beside.
“You wanted Martin punished.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted your father avenged.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted money.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted me.”
Tears slid down her face.
“Yes.”
“And when those things conflicted, you kept choosing whichever lie let you hold onto all of them.”
She nodded.
That was the closest thing to truth we had ever shared.
I stood.
“Jonathan.”
I paused.
“My father was wrong about you.”
I looked back.
“No.”
She frowned.
“He was wrong about what I did.”
I said.
“But he wasn’t wrong that my company hurt him.”
Florence’s face changed.
“I should have known what Martin was doing.”
“That isn’t the same as doing it.”
“No.”
I nodded.
“But it isn’t nothing.”
For the first time since the wedding, Florence looked at me without trying to convince me of anything.
“Take care of Leo.”
“I will.”
“And Hannah.”
“I’m learning.”
A tiny smile.
“Good.”
I walked away.
I did not forgive her.
I did not hate her.
May you like
Those would both have been easier.
I simply stopped letting love argue with facts.
