Chương 6
He closed the oven.
“You always diagnose people when you want them to stop asking questions.”
She took a sip of wine.
“Did you call someone?”
“Yes.”
“Miles?”
“No.”
The glass stopped near her lips.
“Who?”
“I’m not discussing it.”
“You are behaving recklessly.”
“I inherited that from both sides.”
A tired sound escaped her, almost a laugh. It vanished quickly.
Julian leaned against the counter. “Do you remember Mateo Ruiz’s children?”
Celeste looked at the wine.
“The boy had a blue tie,” he said. “It was too long for him.”
“I remember.”
“His sister kept holding his sleeve.”
“I remember.”
“Did you know about Shaw’s memorandum when you spoke to them?”
“Yes.”
Julian waited for remorse, explanation, anything that might resemble the woman who had taught him to write condolence notes by hand.
Celeste turned the stem of the glass between her fingers.
“I had not slept in three nights,” she said. “Your father was shouting at Malcolm in the library. Reporters were outside the gates. A bank threatened to pause financing on two projects. You were in the hospital after the memorial because you had a panic attack and insisted it was food poisoning.”
“I didn’t have a panic attack.”
“You could not breathe.”
“I had been awake for forty hours.”
“You see? Even now you protect the version of yourself you can tolerate.”
He looked away.
She continued in the same calm tone. “I spoke to Mrs. Ruiz because no one else in this family could stand upright that day. I held her hand. I told her we were sorry. I was sorry.”
“But not enough.”
“No,” Celeste said. “Not enough to destroy you.”
The oven timer sounded.
Neither moved at first.
Then Julian crossed the kitchen, turned it off, and removed the pan. Steam carried lemon and rosemary into the room. Nora had tucked whole garlic cloves beneath the chicken skin because Edmund had liked them that way.
Julian set the pan on the stove.
Celeste looked at it.
“She knew he was dying before I did,” Julian said.
“Nora?”
“She changed his meals before the doctors asked. Smaller portions. Less salt. She started making broth he could drink from a cup.”
“She was good at her work.”
“She was kind to him.”
“Yes.”
“And you dismissed her in an employment envelope containing evidence of payments made in his name.”
Celeste closed her eyes briefly. “Elliot confused the envelopes.”
“That mistake may be the first honest thing the family office has done in years.”
Nora reached her apartment in Queens just after eight. The building’s front door stuck in humid weather, and she had to pull it twice before the lock released. On the second-floor landing, someone had left a bag of potting soil beside the radiator. A child’s scooter blocked half the hallway.
Ordinary objects should have comforted her. Instead, each one seemed to prove how far she had traveled from the mansion and how little of its protection had ever belonged to her.
Inside her apartment, she locked the door, checked it, then checked it again.
Her roommate, Lena Ortiz, was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a laptop balanced on one knee. Lena taught middle-school science and spent Wednesday evenings grading lab reports while watching cooking competitions without sound.
She looked up.
“What happened to your face?”
Nora put her bag on the floor.
“I got fired.”
Lena closed the laptop.
Nora’s voice broke on the last word, not loudly, but enough to embarrass her. She turned toward the kitchenette and pretended to look for a glass.
Lena stood. “What did you do?”
Nora stared at her.
“I mean, what do they say you did?”
“I opened an envelope with my name on it.”
“That seems aggressively reasonable.”
“There were bank records inside.”
Lena’s expression changed. “Their bank records?”
“Julian’s father’s.”
“The dead one?”
“Yes.”
“Are we speaking quietly because rich people can hear through walls?”
Nora laughed once and covered her mouth. The laugh became a breath she could not finish.
Lena crossed the room and stopped before touching her.
“Can I hug you?”
Nora nodded.
She lasted perhaps three seconds before pulling away. Her wrist hurt where Celeste had gripped it. She looked down and saw the mark had darkened.
Lena saw it too.
“Who did that?”
Nora sat on the couch.
“Celeste.”
Lena lowered herself beside her. “We’re calling the police.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
“No police.”
“She put her hands on you.”
“She held my wrist.”
“That is a very elegant way to describe someone putting her hands on you.”
“I took photographs of private documents.”
“You found them in your envelope.”
“I don’t know what that means legally.”
“Neither does Celeste, probably. Rich people just say legally and wait for everyone else to become tired.”
Nora leaned back and closed her eyes.
She had seventeen hundred dollars in checking, nine hundred in savings, and a rent payment due in twelve days. She had no written employment contract beyond a two-page confidentiality agreement and a letter stating her salary. The health insurance Celeste provided through the household company would likely end with the month.
“What was in the records?” Lena asked.
“Payments.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. A company called Coastal Review. There were transfers every month.”
“To the dead father?”
“From an account in his name.”
Lena was quiet.
Nora opened her eyes. “I took pictures.”
“Good.”
“Celeste told me to delete them.”
“Better.”
“That is not better.”
“It means they matter.”
Nora took out her phone. Her hands shook enough that she entered the wrong passcode twice.
The photographs were still there. Seven images, each taken quickly in the household office. Some were crooked. One showed only half a page because she had heard Celeste’s heels in the hall.
Lena moved closer but did not reach for the phone.
“Back them up.”
“Julian said that.”
“Do you trust Julian?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Nora looked at her.
May you like
Lena shrugged. “Trust is expensive tonight.”
They created a new email account from Lena’s laptop, uploaded the photographs, and saved copies to a small flash drive shaped like a cartoon rocket. Lena had received it from a student who believed science teachers enjoyed novelty storage devices.
