"About what?"
He turned the laptop around and pressed play.
He watched her face while the footage ran, and he watched the mask come off—not all at once, but in pieces, like paint flaking off a wall.
"That's illegal," she said finally. "You can't record someone without consent."
"It's my house," Thomas said. "And in this state, it isn't."
"You were never here!" Her voice changed then, dropped an octave, lost all its sweetness. "Do you understand that? You were on planes! You were closing deals! I raised your children! I did the work you were too important to do! And they were difficult, Thomas! They were so much more difficult than you'll ever know!"
"She was six," he said.
"She was manipulative!"
"She was six years old, and she gave her brother her dinner."
The study door opened. Rachel stood up so fast her chair went over backward. She looked at the detective, and then at the file Frank Colbert set on the desk: bank statements, emails, a custody petition already drafted and dated. And Thomas watched her understand in real time that there was no version of this she could talk her way out of.
She was handcuffed in the front hall, ten feet from where his briefcase had hit the floor.