Chương 4
Adrian stared at the silver card inside the evidence sleeve.
“No,” he said.
The meeting ended after midnight.
Celeste was escorted to a private exit to avoid the remaining guests. Adrian did not walk with her. She stopped near the library door and waited until the others had moved down the hall.
“I need five minutes,” she said.
He kept his hands in his pockets.
“You had five minutes in the auction hall.”
“That was different.”
“Yes.”
“Adrian, I made a mistake.”
He looked at her.
The phrase was so small that for a moment he could not fit it around what had happened.
“A mistake.”
“I panicked.”
“You pointed at my mother.”
“I believed the access log would implicate her whether I said anything or not.”
“You knew why it implicated her.”
Celeste glanced toward the security officer standing twenty feet away.
“Keep your voice down.”
He almost laughed again.
“You used her card, copied the bid, contacted Malcolm Rusk, and accused her in front of every donor in the room. Which part was panic?”
“I didn’t give Malcolm the final number.”
“What did you give him?”
“Context.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I warned him the foundation might overbid.”
“Why?”
“Because if the foundation paid what Julian authorized, it would distort the market and embarrass us later.”
“Us?”
“The institution.”
The same refuge, spoken in a different voice.
Adrian pulled out his phone. Still no message from Eleanor.
Celeste watched the screen light his face.
“She will answer when she wants you to suffer enough,” she said.
The cruelty of it was quiet. Familiar. It sounded like something Celeste had said before about other people, and he had mistaken it for insight.
He put the phone away.
“My mother doesn’t work that way.”
Celeste’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know how she works. That is half the problem.”
He stepped closer, not threateningly, but enough that she stopped trying to whisper.
“You stole from her.”
“I borrowed a card.”
“You framed her.”
“I responded to evidence before I had the full picture.”
“You created the evidence.”
She breathed out through her nose. “You are not innocent here.”
He went still.
“You sat there,” she said. “You decided she might be guilty. Maybe because some part of you has wanted her to be wrong for years. Don’t turn me into the only person in that room who failed her.”
The words struck because they were not entirely false.
Adrian looked away.
Celeste saw it and softened her tone.
“I can explain everything. Not tonight. Not while lawyers are circling. Come home with me. We’ll talk when we’re calm.”
He looked toward the staircase.
At the bottom, staff were clearing untouched desserts from the banquet table. Candle flames trembled as servers passed. The chairs on either side of the long walnut surface stood at irregular angles now, evidence that real bodies had occupied the perfect room.
“No,” he said.
Celeste’s face closed.
“Are you ending this?”
“I don’t know what this was.”
“That is convenient.”
“Probably.”
He walked downstairs before she could answer.
At one in the morning, he drove to his mother’s townhouse in Georgetown.
The lights were off except for a small lamp in the front parlor. Rain shone on the brick sidewalk. Her black handbag sat on a chair visible through the narrow glass beside the door.
He rang the bell.
No answer.
He rang again.
After a minute, a light came on upstairs.
The door remained closed.
“Mother,” he said toward the wood, feeling ridiculous and twelve years old. “I know you’re awake.”
A curtain shifted on the second floor.
He waited.
The lock finally turned.
Eleanor opened the door wearing a gray robe over a white nightgown. Her silver hair was brushed back from her face. She had removed her pearl earrings and makeup. Without them, she looked older, though not fragile.
She did not invite him in.
“You forgot your wrap,” he said.
He held out the folded cashmere.
She looked at it, then at him.
“Thank you.”
She took the wrap.
He waited for the door to open wider.
It did not.
“The footage cleared you,” he said.
“I was aware that I did not enter the archive.”
“Mara found the recording.”
“That was competent of her.”
“Celeste had your card.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“I knew it was missing.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“I did.”
He stared at her.
“To whom?”
“Julian. Security. You were copied.”
He remembered an email from the previous Friday with the subject line Credential Replacement. He had opened it during a donor lunch, read the first sentence, and forwarded it to his assistant with the instruction Please handle.
“I didn’t see—”
“You did see it.”
“I didn’t understand.”
“No.”
The single word did not accuse him. It left him nowhere to go.
He looked past her into the parlor. A glass of water stood on the side table beside an open book. Her handbag had been placed upright on the chair, the clasp closed. The ordinary arrangement made the night at the foundation seem both unreal and permanent.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
He lowered his voice. “Please.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened slightly around the wrap.
“I spent forty minutes in a taxi deciding whether I had taught you to be cautious or merely afraid,” she said. “I have not finished deciding.”
“I was shocked.”
“So was I.”
“I didn’t know what was true.”
“You knew me.”
He looked down at the wet step.
Eleanor watched him with tired gray eyes.
“Celeste said the system showed your card,” he said. “There were donors, the board, the auction—”
“Yes.”
“I thought intervening before we had facts could make it worse.”
“For the foundation.”
“Yes.”
“For Celeste.”
He did not answer.
“For yourself,” she said.
The porch light hummed above them.
A car moved slowly along the street, tires whispering through rainwater. Somewhere inside the townhouse, an old radiator knocked twice.
May you like
“I should have said something,” Adrian said.
“You should have looked at me.”
