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Chapter Nineteen: "Four Hours"
publish date:
2026-06-06 18:12:53
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THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Twenty-Five: "Contingency"
CALLUMTuesday, 9:14amGeoffrey Marsh had an office on the thirty-eighth floor of a building in the Financial District that he had occupied for eleven years.Callum had been in that office many times. Quarterly meetings. Drinks after difficult quarters. Conversations that started professional and ended personal because thirty years of knowing someone does that eventually.He knocked once. Opened the door without waiting.Geoffrey was at his desk but not working.The document in front of him was closed. His hands were folded on top of it. On the corner of the desk a glass of whisky, barely touched, at nine in the morning. His lawyer's business card was beside the phone with a number written on it in fresh ink.He didn't look up immediately.When he did there was nothing in his face that resembled surprise.Sit down, he said.Callum sat.You found the document, Geoffrey said.Yes.Richard brought it.Yes.Geoffrey nodded once.How much does she know, he said.Everything.He absorbed tha
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Twenty-Four: "The Name"
ZARAMonday, 11:47pmSix blocks. Neither of them said anything.Richard was in a car somewhere behind them. His idea. Separation. Three people leaving together told a different story than two people on foot.Her bag on her shoulder. Inside it thirty pages and her mother's handwriting. Your father asked me to.She'd been keeping herself moving since the hotel room. Making herself look at the street ahead and think about where they were going and not think about page fourteen and not think about her mother packing quietly in the night and not think about a man she'd never met who had moved money through three holding companies between 2001 and 2003 and died before she was born.She was doing it successfully.Then Callum's hand found hers.Not saying anything. Just there.She let herself stop.She stood on the pavement in November with the city going past and let herself feel the weight of it for exactly thirty seconds.Her father had been in it. Not peripherally. As a principal.Her mot
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Twenty-Three: "Eleven O'Clock"
ZARAMonday, 11:03pmThe hotel was the kind that had existed since the fifties and stopped trying to be anything other than what it was. Dark wood panelling. Carpet that had been good once. A bar off the lobby that served decent whisky and didn't ask questions.Richard Arch was already there.Third floor. A room booked under a name that wasn't his. He opened the door when they knocked and stood back without saying anything.Small room. A desk, a chair, a bed that hadn't been touched. On the desk a glass of water and a manila envelope, thick, sealed, placed there with the care of something carried a long way.Richard looked at them both.He looked older than he had at the West Village restaurant. Not in the way of a man who had aged. In the way of a man who had put something down that he'd been holding upright for a long time and the effort of it was now visible.Sit down, he said.They sat. Richard stayed standing.He looked at the envelope.I've been deciding how to begin this for tw
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Twenty-Two: "The Investigator"
ZARAMonday, 7:48pmHer name was Helen Marsh and she worked out of a one-room office on the fourth floor of a building on West Forty-Fourth Street with no directory listing and a door with no nameplate.Callum had called ahead from a payphone two blocks away.She was waiting when they arrived.Mid-fifties. Dark hair threaded with grey. The same woman Zara had met weeks ago when she'd gone to read the Reyes addendum. She registered that without showing it.Helen looked at both of them. Then at the door behind them.Come in, she said.The office was small and deliberately so. One desk. Two chairs across from it. A window facing a brick wall. A filing cabinet with a combination lock. On the desk a legal pad, a pen, and a manila folder placed there recently enough that the edges were still crisp.They sat.Helen sat across from them.She looked at the folder. Then at Zara.I was going to call you tomorrow, she said. I've been sitting on something for nine days.Nine days, Callum said.Sin
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Twenty-One: "The Street"
ZARAMonday, 6:11pmThe three of them stood on the pavement outside the building and the city went past them like nothing had happened.Callum was on his phone. Richard's flight. Arrival time. Voice low, turned slightly away.Isla stood beside Zara with her coat pulled closed and her eyes on the middle distance.You knew, Zara said quietly. That someone would take the folder.Isla looked at her.I suspected, she said. I brought copies because I suspected.And the message this morning, Zara said. Telling you to wait.I've been receiving messages for three weeks, Isla said. Different numbers. Different phrasing. All of them telling me to hold off. She paused. I stopped asking who was sending them and started asking why they needed me to wait.And, Zara said.My waiting served someone else's timeline, Isla said. Not mine.Zara looked at the building behind them. The glass doors. The lobby visible through them, the event still continuing inside.She thought about the grey suit. Thirty-sev
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Twenty: "The Reception"
ZARAMonday, 5:44pmThey were still twenty minutes away when Bri called.She answered on the first ring.It's already happening, Bri said. Someone's livestreaming it. Z it's everywhere.Zara looked at Callum.He kept his eyes on the road.She put the call on speaker and Bri sent the link and she opened it and held the phone between them.The video was shaky. Shot from someone's phone across a crowded room. Marble floors, round tables, the particular lighting of an event that cost more to attend than most people made in a month. And in the centre of the room a woman in a dark dress standing at a microphone she hadn't been invited to use.Isla.Her voice came through the phone speaker slightly distorted.My name is Isla Cole, she said. My father's name is Edward Cole. Before that his name was Edward Reyes. He was the principal broker of a financial arrangement conducted between 2001 and 2004 that involved at minimum three of the companies represented in this room tonight.The room in th
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Eighteen: "Richard"
CALLUMMonday, 2:14pmThe landline was in the study.He'd forgotten it existed. A black rotary phone on a desk that hadn't been used in years, the cord coiled and slightly stiff. He picked up the receiver. Dial tone.Zara was in the doorway.He dialled his father's private number from memory. Seven
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Seventeen: "Connecticut"
ZARAMonday, 11:23amThe house was smaller than she expected.White clapboard, grey shutters, a porch that needed painting, trees close on three sides. It sat at the end of a dirt road off a county route she wouldn't have found without him. No neighbours visible. No sound except wind in the trees a
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Sixteen: "The Archive"
ZARAMonday, 6:47amShe was at the kitchen island at six with her sketchbook open and nothing drawn in it.The voice note had played in her head all night. Your name was already in that file. Before the placement existed. She'd lain in the dark until four and then stopped trying and got up.His off
THE STAND-IN WIFE: Three weeks,One lie,No way out Chapter Fifteen: "What His Mother Knew"
CALLUMSunday, 3:44pmHe looked at the paper.One name. His grandmother's handwriting, careful and deliberate.He knew the name.He'd known it for years. Had files on it. Had shaken hands with this person. Had trusted this person with things that mattered.He folded the paper. Set it on the table.
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