He was standing near the sofa, a glass in one hand, his phone pressed to his ear. He was not alone. Seated on the sofa, in a silk robe, was Vanessa, the woman Caleb had described to me and to his attorney and to the court as a financial advisor who was helping him reorganize our family investments. She was there in our living room, at ease, familiar with the space in a way that made the word advisor dissolve into its obvious replacement.
Caleb was laughing on the phone. Not with warmth. With that dry, dismissive laugh he used when discussing people he had already decided were beneath him.
“No, I’m telling you, it’ll be easy,” he said. “Harper will repeat whatever you need if you’re patient. You just have to convince her that her mother gets sad, that she yells sometimes, that she forgets things. Normal stuff. Nothing too dramatic.”
