Chương 13
Nathan’s hands tightened around the paper.
“Why didn’t your mother tell me?”
“She didn’t know how.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It was the answer then.”
Grace looked at the letter.
“The courier came the next morning.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
Grace could still see the hospital room.
The plastic cup of ice water.
The monitor straps around her abdomen.
Her mother asleep in a chair with her mouth slightly open.
A man in a gray jacket asking whether Grace Lin was present.
“He said it was confidential.”
Nathan opened his eyes.
“I read it while they were checking Lily’s heartbeat.”
His expression twisted.
Grace continued anyway.
“I thought your family knew everything.”
“They didn’t.”
“I thought you had told them.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I thought you wanted me gone.”
“I didn’t.”
Grace’s voice sharpened.
“But I believed you did.”
Nathan looked at the forged letter again.
“Did you verify it?”
“No.”
“Call the company?”
Grace’s eyes flashed.
“I had just been told not to.”
He nodded immediately.
“You’re right.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“Don’t say that.”
He stopped.
Grace pressed her left hand flat against the table.
“I was thirty-one weeks pregnant, bleeding, alone, and holding a letter that looked more official than anything in my life.”
Nathan’s face crumpled for an instant before he controlled it.
“After that, I stopped trying.”
He looked at her.
“Completely?”
“Yes.”
“Why keep the letter?”
Grace gave a tired laugh.
“Because part of me hated myself for believing it.”
Nathan stared at the page.
“And Victoria knew about it.”
“Yes.”
“She either sent it or knows who did.”
Grace nodded.
Nathan reached for his phone.
This time Grace did not stop him.
“Who are you calling?”
“My father.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Nathan.”
“He needs to see this.”
“I don’t want your family descending on me.”
“They won’t.”
“You cannot promise that.”
He stopped with his thumb above the screen.
Grace stared at him.
“You don’t get to turn this into a Cole family emergency and make me evidence.”
Nathan lowered the phone.
The words visibly cost him.
“You’re right.”
Grace looked at him, surprised.
He placed the phone face down.
“What do you want to do?”
The question was so simple that Grace almost did not understand it.
For years, people had decided around her.
Her mother.
Victoria.
An invisible version of Nathan constructed from silence.
Now the real man sat across from her, furious enough to shake, and asked what she wanted.
Grace looked at the forged letter.
“We take everything to the police.”
Nathan nodded.
“The messages too.”
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
Grace met his eyes.
“After that, you call your father.”
Nathan nodded again.
“No lawyers before I speak to the police.”
“All right.”
“No company security.”
“All right.”
“No one contacts Victoria.”
Nathan hesitated.
Grace saw it.
“No one.”
He exhaled.
“All right.”
Grace gathered the papers.
Nathan remained seated.
“What?”
He looked toward the refrigerator drawing.
“Nothing.”
“That is never true with you.”
His mouth tightened.
“I keep thinking about thirty-one weeks.”
Grace went still.
Nathan looked at her.
“I was at a conference in Chicago.”
She did not answer.
“I remember because my father gave a speech.”
Grace folded the hospital letter carefully.
“I don’t need to know where you were.”
“I do.”
“Nathan.”
“I need to understand where I was while this was happening.”
Grace looked at him.
He seemed older than he had that morning.
Not because of his face.
Because certainty had left it.
“You were living your life.”
His eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
Grace placed the letter back in its envelope.
“That was the problem.”
Nathan looked up.
Grace expected anger.
Instead, he nodded.
“I know.”
She almost told him not to say it.
This time she didn’t.
His phone buzzed on the table.
Both of them looked down.
Victoria’s name appeared on the screen.
Nathan did not touch it.
The call stopped.
Three seconds later, a message arrived.
Grace could see the preview from where she stood.
You need to come home before this gets worse.
Nathan stared at it.
Another message appeared.
Your father knows.
Grace’s stomach tightened.
Nathan picked up the phone.
A third message arrived before he could unlock it.
Ask him who authorized the letter.
Nathan read the message twice.
Grace watched his face change from anger to something more unsettled.
“He says my father authorized it.”
Grace held the envelope against the table.
“No.”
Nathan looked up.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know what Victoria does.”
He stared at her.
“She takes one true thing and wraps it around whatever lie she needs.”
Nathan looked back at the message.
Grace continued.
“If your father really authorized that letter, Victoria gains nothing by warning you before you ask him.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
“She wants me angry before the conversation starts.”
“Yes.”
“So I hear whatever he says as a cover.”
“Yes.”
Nathan placed the phone down carefully.
“You’ve gotten good at reading her.”
Grace looked toward the refrigerator drawing.
“I had a violent lesson.”
The silence that followed was brief and ugly.
Nathan picked up the forged letter.
“We take this to the police first.”
Grace nodded.
They left the apartment with the tablet, the hospital envelope, and copies of the discharge papers sealed inside a grocery tote because Grace could not find anything more dignified.
Nathan did not comment on the tote.
At the station, they waited under fluorescent lights while a vending machine hummed in the corner.
A uniformed officer took Grace’s initial statement, photographed the bruise beginning to spread across her shoulder, and asked Nathan separately what he had witnessed.
Grace could see him through the glass partition.
He sat with both hands flat on his knees and answered without gesturing.
When the detective assigned to follow up examined the text thread and the forged letter, her expression remained professional.
She did not promise anything.
Grace appreciated that.
May you like
“We’ll need the original device if it’s recovered,” the detective said.
“My phone is still at the house.”
