Chương 8
One invoice included a project number.
That number matched a dormant trust.
The trust had paid the mortgage on Rebecca and Daniel's house.
It had also paid medical bills, preschool tuition, and an annual amount to a management company.
The management company belonged to Graham's former chief of staff.
Her name was Evelyn Marsh.
She was seventy-one and living in Naples, Florida.
She refused to speak to Adrian.
Then she refused to speak to Dana.
Then, after receiving a subpoena in a civil proceeding connected to the adoption, she hired her own lawyer.
Three weeks passed.
The boys returned to school.
Adrian started seeing them on Saturdays.
Not because a judge ordered it yet.
Because Nina permitted it.
The first Saturday was terrible.
He planned too much.
A private tour of the Museum of Natural History before opening hours.
Lunch at a restaurant with a chef willing to make anything.
Tickets to a Knicks game.
Nina looked at his itinerary and tore it in half.
"They're six."
"They like dinosaurs."
"They also like sitting on the floor and making forts."
"I have floors."
"You have no idea what I'm telling you."
So Adrian went to Rebecca's house.
The boys made a fort from sofa cushions.
He sat inside it until his back hurt.
Jack cheated at Uno.
Miles cried when Owen called him a baby.
Owen denied calling him a baby despite having done it ten seconds earlier.
Theo became furious because Adrian stacked two cushions "wrong."
At lunch Adrian burned grilled cheese.
The smoke alarm went off.
All four boys screamed.
Not from fear.
From laughter.
Adrian stood under the alarm waving a dish towel while Nina opened windows.
"This is not funny."
Jack was on the floor.
"You burned bread!"
"It's cheese."
"You burned cheese!"
Adrian laughed too.
It surprised him.
That night, driving back to New York, he cried for the first time.
Not dramatically.
His eyes simply filled at a red light.
He wiped them with his sleeve and became irritated because the light turned green before he was finished.
The next Saturday went better.
The third went worse.
Owen refused to get in Adrian's car because a reporter had followed them from a park the week before.
Adrian had security start traveling farther back.
Miles asked whether Adrian could buy their house so nobody could take it.
Theo stopped speaking to him for an hour after Adrian answered that houses did not work that way.
Jack asked whether they could change their last name to Cole.
Miles said no.
Owen said maybe.
Theo said Mom would hate it.
Nobody knew whether Rebecca would have.
Claire visited only when Nina approved.
The boys called her Aunt Claire.
Adrian noticed that every time.
He also noticed she never corrected them.
At work, the scandal worsened.
A shareholder group demanded an independent review of payments made through Cole family entities.
Graham argued the company had nothing to do with private family matters.
Technically, he might have been right.
Then Dana's accountant discovered that two payments to Peter Sloane had been made from a corporate discretionary account during a restructuring.
Adrian's board chairman called an emergency meeting.
"You're asking us to expose this."
Adrian sat at the long table with twelve directors staring at him.
"I'm asking you to investigate it."
"Your father says the invoices were miscoded."
"Then the investigation will confirm that."
One director, a former governor, folded his glasses.
"And if it doesn't?"
Adrian looked at the city beyond the windows.
"Then we disclose what happened."
The chairman leaned back.
"That could trigger litigation."
"I know."
"Regulatory scrutiny."
"I know."
"Your father built this company."
Adrian turned.
"My sons built nothing, and somehow they're the ones paying for it."
Nobody answered.
Afterward Graham waited in the private elevator lobby.
"You enjoyed that."
Adrian pressed the button.
"No."
"You did."
The elevator arrived.
Graham stepped inside with him.
For thirty floors neither spoke.
Then Graham said, "You think this is about four children."
Adrian looked at him.
Graham stared straight ahead.
"It was about you."
That sentence almost made Adrian laugh.
"Of course it was."
"You were falling apart."
"I was grieving."
"You were drunk."
"Sometimes."
"You missed three board meetings."
"I wasn't chairman."
"You punched a hotel wall."
Adrian looked at his knuckles as if the old bruise might still be there.
"Yes."
"Claire was twenty-five. Pregnant with four babies. Terrified. The pregnancy could have killed her. You left the country."
The elevator reached the lobby.
Neither moved.
Graham pressed the door-close button.
"I did what you would not."
"You stole my children."
"I protected them."
"From me?"
"From chaos."
Adrian stared at him.
Graham continued.
"Rebecca and Daniel were stable. They wanted children. Claire wanted a way out. You were in no condition to raise one infant, let alone four."
"So you decided I should think they were dead."
"Claire decided that."
There it was.
The shift.
Not denial.
Allocation of blame.
Adrian stepped closer.
"You helped."
"I helped people survive a bad situation."
"Did you pay Rebecca?"
"I provided for my grandchildren."
Adrian's stomach turned.
"You knew they were your grandchildren."
Graham's face hardened.
"I never denied that."
"You let me bury them."
"You buried an idea."
Adrian hit the elevator stop button.
The car jerked gently.
Graham looked at him.
Adrian's hands had curled into fists.
For half a second he wanted to use one.
Then he saw himself at thirty, drunk outside a hotel room, punching drywall because his mother was dead and he had no language for helplessness except impact.
He opened his hands.
"Say that again."
Graham's eyes narrowed.
"You buried an idea. They were alive. They were cared for."
Adrian pressed the emergency release and restarted the elevator.
The doors opened.
He stepped out.
Graham said behind him, "You would have ruined them."
Adrian turned.
"Maybe."
His father's certainty faltered.
May you like
Adrian nodded slowly.
"Maybe I would've been terrible. Maybe Claire would've left me. Maybe we'd have spent years in court. Maybe I'd have gotten sober sooner. Maybe later. Maybe one of them would've hated me."
