Chương 4
Four messages from coworkers.
Two from people she had not spoken to since college.
One from her landlord, bizarrely, saying nothing but Is this you???
Claire closed her eyes.
“No.”
Daniel picked up his own phone.
His jaw tightened.
“What?”
“Someone posted the ballroom video.”
“How much?”
He watched for several seconds.
“Enough.”
“Daniel.”
He turned the screen toward her.
The video began with Eleanor already gripping the pendant.
Claire heard her own voice.
Don’t touch it. My mother died protecting that stone.
The image shook when the pendant fell.
Someone in the comments had already typed:
HARROW HEIRESS???
Another:
Did Eleanor Harrow just find her secret granddaughter at her own gala?
Claire handed the phone back.
“No.”
Daniel looked toward the building.
“We’re leaving.”
This time she agreed.
By the time they reached his car, her phone had forty-three notifications.
By midnight it had more than two hundred.
Eleanor called once.
Claire did not answer.
At 12:17, an unknown number left a voicemail.
Claire listened because she expected a reporter.
It was Eleanor.
“I won’t call again tonight. I’m sorry about what happened in the ballroom. Not only what I learned. What I did before I learned it. I had no right to put my hands on you.”
There was a pause.
Eleanor inhaled.
“I know an apology does not make that less public.”
Another pause.
“If you decide you want answers, I have records. Family records. The accident file. I will make everything available to you.”
The voicemail ended.
Claire replayed it once.
Daniel sat beside her on the couch in his apartment, tie gone, tuxedo jacket hanging over a chair.
“Well?”
Claire set the phone down.
“She apologizes like a person who has staff review apologies.”
“Did it sound reviewed?”
“No.”
“That might be worse.”
Claire looked at the broken chain spread on his coffee table.
The jade rested beside it.
Daniel had found a small ceramic bowl so it would not roll onto the floor.
Claire touched the stone.
“My mother told me never to let anyone take this.”
Daniel leaned back.
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
“That seems relevant.”
“She said lots of things that sounded insane.”
“Such as?”
“Never use your real birthday as a password.”
“That’s good advice.”
“Never let anyone photograph your driver’s license.”
“Also good.”
“Never trust a man who owns more than one boat.”
Daniel considered that.
“I’m neutral.”
Claire looked at him.
“She used to check hotel fire exits before we unpacked.”
“That’s also not crazy.”
“She made me memorize her phone number before I learned our address.”
Daniel was quiet.
Claire looked toward the dark window.
“I thought she was anxious.”
“She was anxious.”
“I thought it came from nowhere.”
“That part might be wrong.”
At two in the morning Claire opened the envelope from Evelyn’s jewelry box for the first time since the week after the funeral.
She kept it in her purse now because leaving it in her apartment had begun to feel irresponsible.
The paper inside was ordinary yellow legal-pad paper, folded twice.
Claire had read it so many times that the creases had softened.
C—
The jade is yours. If anyone ever recognizes it, do not let them take it from you.
There was another piece once.
If it still exists, the person wearing it will know what the stone means, even if she lies about everything else.
I am sorry I waited too long.
Mom
Claire laid the page beside the pendant.
Daniel read it again.
“She.”
Claire looked up.
“What?”
“Your mother wrote ‘the person wearing it.’ Then ‘she lies.’”
Claire stared at the sentence.
She had noticed the pronoun before.
She had thought Evelyn meant a jeweler, an old friend, some woman she had fought with decades ago.
Daniel said, “She expected a woman.”
Claire sat back.
“My mother knew Eleanor was alive.”
“Looks like it.”
“She knew Eleanor might recognize the stone.”
“Yes.”
“And she still didn’t tell me who she was.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes.
“You should sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re shaking.”
Claire looked at her hands.
He was right.
She folded the note.
“I want the records.”
Daniel nodded.
“I figured.”
“I don’t want money.”
“I didn’t say anything about money.”
“I know.”
She looked at him.
“I need you to know that.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want a foundation or a trust or a building with my name on it.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you fight conversations nobody has started.”
She stared at him.
Then, despite everything, she smiled.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Currently flexible.”
He reached for her hand.
She let him take it.
Eleanor sent the records the next morning through a lawyer.
Claire refused to download them.
“Absolutely not.”
Daniel looked over from the kitchen.
“You asked for them.”
“I asked for records. I didn’t ask for a secure portal with a seven-page access agreement.”
Daniel walked over.
He was a construction attorney, which meant he regarded documents the way other people regarded weather: unavoidable, frequently unpleasant, occasionally dangerous if ignored.
He scanned the email.
“This is mostly privacy language.”
“Mostly?”
“One paragraph says viewing the documents doesn’t establish legal status, inheritance rights, or familial relationship.”
Claire stared at him.
“I told you.”
“You told me you didn’t want money. Eleanor’s lawyer doesn’t know what you want.”
“He thinks I want money.”
“He thinks everyone wants money. He’s a lawyer.”
“You’re a lawyer.”
“I know.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“I know.”
She eventually opened the portal.
There were thirty-eight files.
Police reports.
A death certificate.
Funeral invoices.
Photographs Claire could not bring herself to open.
A scanned newspaper article.
Eleanor’s handwritten statement from June 2003.
Daniel printed the index at his office because Claire said she could not think while staring at a browser window.
May you like
They read the documents that evening at her kitchen table.
Claire’s apartment was above a laundromat in Somerville. On Tuesdays, the building smelled faintly of fabric softener and hot dust. The refrigerator clicked every four minutes. Evelyn had hated the place on sight.
