Chương 3
"Seven."
Owen gave me a look.
I counted them again in my head and hated that he was right.
"Fine."
He picked up his phone.
"Get some sleep."
"I'm not sleeping."
"You haven't slept properly in a week."
"I've spent a week pretending my legs don't work."
"Those are separate problems."
I walked toward the bedroom and stopped at the doorway.
"Daniel's access."
"I already copied the audit trail."
"Don't confront him."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Don't lock him out either."
Owen's eyebrows lifted.
"You want him to keep going."
"I want to know what he thinks he's doing."
"That can get expensive."
"So can friendship."
Owen said nothing to that.
I closed the bedroom door and stood in the dark for a while.
The house was too quiet upstairs.
Down below, staff collected glasses and folded linens while people who had just laughed at me drove home in cars paid for by salaries I had approved.
I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed both knees because they ached from being held still.
It was almost funny.
I had invented paralysis and somehow acquired real discomfort from maintaining it.
My phone showed four missed calls from Vanessa.
All four had come while she was downstairs.
I opened her messages.
You disappeared.
Your father wants to discuss Monday.
Don't make this weird.
Call me when you're awake.
She was still in the house.
I could hear her heels occasionally in the hall outside the suite.
Then the sound stopped.
A minute later came a soft knock.
I moved into the wheelchair, pulled the blanket over my legs, and called for whoever it was to enter.
Vanessa opened the door.
She had removed her earrings.
Without them, she looked younger and more tired.
For a second, I could almost see the woman who had once spent an entire Sunday assembling a bookshelf backward with me because neither of us wanted to admit we had ignored the instructions.
Then she shut the door behind her.
"Why are you ignoring my calls?"
"You were forty feet away."
"You vanished."
"I went upstairs."
"You know what I mean."
She crossed the room and set her phone on the dresser.
"I had to spend the last hour answering questions about you."
"How terrible."
"Don't start."
"You're the one who came into my bedroom."
"Our bedroom."
That was interesting.
She had not slept here since the accident.
"Is it?"
Her mouth tightened.
"I know you're angry."
"Do you?"
"I was harsh downstairs."
"You called me useless."
"I was drunk."
"You were on your third glass."
"You counted?"
"I had little else to do."
She stared at me.
The silence stretched long enough for something underneath her irritation to show.
Not guilt.
Calculation.
"Your father is worried about the board meeting Monday," she said.
There it was.
"My father worries professionally."
"This isn't funny."
"I wasn't joking."
"He thinks Martin may force a competency review."
I let my face change just enough.
"Martin told you that?"
"No."
"Who did?"
"People talk."
"Which people?"
"Adrian, don't interrogate me."
She picked up her phone again, then put it back down without checking it.
"When you disappear from the company for a month and won't tell anyone what your prognosis is, people get nervous."
"My prognosis is private."
"Not when you're CEO."
"Especially then."
She turned away.
"The company employs eight thousand people."
"Nine thousand four hundred."
"You know what I mean."
"I usually do."
She looked back at me, and this time the irritation was real.
"You always do that."
"Do what?"
"Make someone feel stupid over one number."
"I corrected a number."
"You corrected me."
"Those are often related."
The line landed harder than I intended.
Vanessa's face went still.
I had seen that expression before, usually just before she withdrew from an argument and punished me later with silence.
For once, I noticed my own part in creating it.
I had spent years treating precision like virtue even when it was simply another way to win.
"I shouldn't have said that," I told her.
She blinked.
An apology from me apparently frightened her more than an insult.
"No," she said.
"You shouldn't have."
She sat on the chair near the window.
For a minute neither of us spoke.
Outside, tires crackled over the gravel drive.
Somewhere in the bathroom, a faucet had not been turned completely off.
Vanessa rubbed the pale indentation where her earring had pressed against her lobe.
"I don't know how to do this," she said.
The sentence surprised me enough that I nearly moved my leg.
"Do what?"
"This."
She gestured toward me.
"You think I'm awful."
"Tonight made a strong argument."
"I know what I said."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
She leaned forward.
"I spent two years planning a life with you, and then suddenly everything changed."
"Everything changed for me too."
"I know."
"No, you don't."
She laughed once without humor.
"There you go."
"What?"
"The competition."
I stared at her.
"If I say I'm scared, you're more scared."
"Vanessa—"
"If I say I'm losing something, you've lost more."
"You believe this is about who suffers most?"
"I believe there's no room next to you when something goes wrong."
That silenced me.
She looked at the floor.
"When your mother died, you went back to work three days later."
"Four."
Her head snapped up.
I almost smiled at the absurdity and stopped myself.
"Sorry."
"No, that's exactly it."
She pressed her thumb against her ring and rotated it.
"Everything has to be managed."
"My mother hated funerals."
"That isn't what I'm talking about."
"I know."
The words came out quieter than I expected.
Vanessa watched me for a long moment.
Then she exhaled.
"I said something disgusting tonight."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
I wanted to believe her.
That was the dangerous part.
If she had stayed cruel, everything would have been easy.
Cruelty simplifies people.
An apology complicates them.
"Why did you say it?"
May you like
Her eyes moved toward the door.
"I was angry."
