Chương 10
"Richard."
Megan laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
"Of course he did."
Claire stood.
"Why would my father buy your car?"
"He didn't personally buy it."
"Samir."
"Vale Biomedical bought it through an employee vehicle program."
"You worked at the hospital."
"I consulted for Vale."
Claire remembered a silver Audi outside her father's house the summer after Evan died.
She had noticed it because the rear bumper still carried the faint crescent-shaped scratch Samir had made backing into her mailbox.
Richard had told her it belonged to a visiting executive.
At the time, she had believed him because believing her father had been one of the last easy habits left in her life.
"Did Evan know Richard had the car?"
"I don't know."
Megan made an exasperated sound.
Samir snapped, "Would you prefer I invent an answer?"
"I'd prefer one night where every man in my family wasn't lying by omission."
"I'm not in your family."
"No, you just ruined enough holidays to qualify."
The security officer cleared his throat.
"Ma'am, I really need to move you downstairs."
Claire nodded.
They resumed their descent.
At the service exit, the officer checked outside before opening the door.
A delivery truck idled beside the loading dock.
Two kitchen employees smoked near a dumpster and stopped talking when they recognized Claire from the gala.
One of them immediately looked at his phone.
Public life had apparently resumed.
Claire pulled Daniel's hood over his head.
He protested.
"Mom."
"Humor me."
"I look stupid."
"You look fourteen."
"Exactly."
Megan's rental SUV was parked across the service lane.
Samir stopped beside it.
"I should go back inside."
Claire opened the passenger door for Daniel.
"No."
"I have patients."
"It's almost eleven."
"I have a patient upstairs whose family thinks I'm checking a scan."
"Then check it."
Megan stared at Claire.
"You just told him to come with us."
"I changed my mind."
Samir looked wounded by that in a way Claire had not expected.
She was too tired to care.
"You remembered something," he said.
Claire closed Daniel's door.
"What?"
"When I said Richard bought the Audi."
"Yes."
"What?"
She considered lying.
Instead she said, "I saw it at his house after Evan died."
Samir's face tightened.
"When?"
"I don't remember."
"Try."
The word struck her badly.
Claire stepped toward him.
"Don't tell me to try."
He nodded.
"Fair."
She hated the apology more than the command.
Megan unlocked the driver's door.
"Can we have the emotional collapse somewhere with snacks?"
Daniel lowered the window.
"I vote snacks."
Claire almost told him not to joke.
Then she saw how tightly he was gripping the seat belt.
"Fine."
Samir said, "Claire, if Richard was on six that night, there may be garage records."
"Four years old?"
"Access logs might be archived."
"By the hospital?"
"Yes."
"The hospital where my father chaired the foundation board for twelve years?"
Samir had no answer.
Claire looked through the window at Daniel.
He was watching them, pretending not to.
She lowered her voice.
"Go check your patient."
"And then?"
"Then find out who can access old garage records without alerting Richard."
Samir glanced toward the hospital.
"That may not be possible."
"Then decide how much of a coward you still are."
His face changed.
Claire regretted it immediately.
She did not take it back.
Samir walked toward the service entrance without another word.
Megan waited until he disappeared inside.
"That was mean."
"I know."
"Good."
Claire got into the SUV.
Megan drove three blocks before Daniel said, "Dad said the number because he knew he was going to die."
Claire turned in her seat.
"No."
"He made me repeat it."
"That doesn't mean—"
"He said, 'Don't trust the date.'"
Megan nearly missed the red light.
The SUV stopped hard enough to lock Claire's seat belt.
"What date?"
Claire asked.
Daniel's eyes filled with frightened certainty.
"The date on the research."
Claire reached into the canvas bag and pulled out the photograph from the envelope.
On the back, beneath Richard's handwriting, was the date Claire had barely noticed before.
October 14.
Evan died on October 14.
Daniel leaned forward.
"That's what Dad meant."
Claire looked at the date again.
Then at the six children in the photograph.
Then at the boy in the center whose face she had spent fourteen years seeing across a breakfast table.
"No," she said.
Megan glanced at her.
"No what?"
Claire turned the photograph over.
Daniel's picture had been taken when he was nine.
Evan had died when Daniel was eleven.
Claire felt the missing two years open in front of her.
"The date isn't when the research happened."
She held the photograph beneath the passing streetlights.
"It's when somebody decided to make it look like it did."
Megan drove another block before she said, "So somebody backdated the study."
"Or forward-dated it."
Claire held the photograph closer to the dashboard light.
Daniel leaned between the front seats despite the seat belt pulling across his chest.
"What's the difference?"
"I don't know yet."
Megan gave her a quick look.
"That's a surprisingly responsible answer."
"Don't get used to it."
The light changed.
Megan turned right instead of continuing toward Claire's house.
"Where are we going?"
"Food."
"We have food at home."
"You have almond milk, mustard, and something in a plastic container that has become self-aware."
Daniel said, "There's cereal."
"Your mother has no milk."
"Almond milk is milk."
Megan looked offended.
"No court in this country would uphold that."
Daniel smiled, but it disappeared when Claire turned the photograph over again.
October 14 had been written in Richard's narrow block print beneath a catalog number and three initials Claire did not recognize.
The ink looked ordinary.
That bothered her.
For four years, she had expected the truth about Evan to look damaged somehow.
She had imagined torn paper, encrypted files, secret recordings, something that announced itself as dangerous.
May you like
Instead, it looked like her father's handwriting on the back of a photograph.
Megan pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour diner.
