Chapter 9 - Sloane Finally Asked What Grant Had Told Me
Sloane's lawyer requested permission for her to communicate through counsel.
Not to apologize.
To ask a question.
Caroline read it to me.
Ms. Mercer wishes to know whether Mr. Mason told Mrs. Mason that Ms. Mercer intended to replace her as the children's mother.
I stared.
“What?”
Rachel said:
“That's specific.”
Too specific.
I answered through Caroline.
No.
Two days later, Sloane provided a written statement to investigators.
I didn't receive the whole thing.
Only the portion relevant to the family case.
Grant had told Sloane I was obsessed with the children calling her “Mom.”
I had never known Sloane had met my children before the kitchen.
I looked at Rachel.
“She met them?”
Rachel looked equally surprised.
“When?”
According to Sloane, twice.
Grant took Owen and Maisie to a park eight months earlier.
Introduced her as a coworker.
Another time, an ice cream shop.
He told Sloane the children loved her.
He told me he had taken them alone.
I felt betrayed in a way the affair itself had not reached.
Not because another woman bought my children ice cream.
Because Grant had been test-driving a new family while still insisting nothing was happening.
Then came the reversal.
Owen remembered Sloane.
Barely.
“The lady with the dog.”
She had brought a terrier to the park.
“Did Dad tell you not to tell me?”
“No.”
“Then why didn't you?”
He shrugged.
“We met lots of Dad's work people.”
Grant had not needed elaborate secrecy.
He had relied on ordinary life being too crowded for children to report every adult they met.
Sloane believed those meetings meant Grant was slowly introducing her.
Grant told her I knew.
I had not.
Sloane told investigators she believed our separation was already arranged.
That I was refusing to move out.
That Grant's attorney was “handling the house.”
Much of that came from him.
But when police asked why she carried the ladle inside, Sloane stopped blaming Grant completely.
She admitted he handed it to her in the garage.
Then she admitted something else.
He told her to put it down before entering.
She didn't.
Rachel read that twice.
“So Grant gave it to her.”
“Yes.”
“But he told her not to carry it inside.”
“Yes.”
“Why give it to her at all?”
Sloane's explanation:
She had parked behind Grant's car.
The ladle was on a workbench in the garage.
She asked why it was there.
Grant picked it up, handed it to her jokingly, and said:
“Here's your weapon.”
Then, when she became angrier, he told her to put it down.
She didn't.
I sat back.
It complicated everything.
Grant had created the joke.
He had put the object in her hand.
He had encouraged a confrontation.
But Sloane chose to carry it through the door.
One person could be manipulative without the other becoming a puppet.
Rachel said:
“I know you wanted the clean version.”
I looked at her.
“What clean version?”
“Where he handed her the ladle and said hit Natalie.”
I didn't answer.
She was right.
Because that version would let me hate one person more efficiently.
Instead Grant had built a situation where he expected me to lose control.
Sloane arrived already furious and made her own terrible choice.
And I had made my own choice weeks earlier to stay while secretly collecting proof.
No equivalence.
Still agency everywhere.
I looked at Rachel.
“What did Grant tell Sloane would happen after?”
Rachel checked the summary.
“She says he promised you would be gone by morning.”
My stomach tightened.
“With the kids?”
Rachel looked up.
“No.”
Sloane thought Grant was keeping them.
Just as the court filing requested.
Then Rachel read the next line.
Sloane believed she would move into the house “after things settled.”
May you like
Grant, however, had already packed his own suitcase.
Which meant even Sloane had not known where he planned to go.
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