Chương 5
I could not help it.
His expression darkened.
“That’s not fair.”
“No.”
I looked toward the door.
“No, it really isn’t.”
He moved around the desk and lowered his voice.
“I need you to understand something.”
There was the word.
Need.
My body recognized it before my mind did.
My father needed six hundred dollars.
My father needed me to cover the electric bill.
My father needed me to delay tuition.
My father needed me to understand.
“The Horizon contract could determine whether thirty-seven people still have jobs in January.”
I said nothing.
“This isn’t about a bigger house or a vacation.”
“Did I say it was?”
“No.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
His eyes dropped.
For the first time that evening, Richard Whitmore looked old.
Not weak.
Not defeated.
Just old.
“I’m asking you not to hold what happened in this family against people who had nothing to do with it.”
The anger in me shifted.
It did not disappear.
It became less convenient.
“You think I can influence the bid.”
“I think your fiancé owns the company deciding it.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You have his ear.”
“I’m not using my relationship to get you a contract.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You brought me into your study.”
He turned away.
Outside the window, rain streaked the glass, distorting the lights from the neighboring houses.
“My company is overleveraged,” he said.
“Two projects went bad, lending tightened, and one investor pulled out in September.”
I stared at him.
“You told everyone business was strong.”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“The truth?”
“To whom?”
“Us.”
He gave me a tired look.
“Your mother would panic.”
“She should know.”
“She knows enough.”
I almost admired the consistency.
Even now, he was deciding what other people were allowed to know.
“Does Logan know?”
“No.”
“Vanessa?”
“No.”
“Does Mom know the company could fail?”
His silence answered.
I looked again at the Hayes folder.
“Why are there thirty-seven jobs depending on one contract?”
“Because I made mistakes.”
That stopped me.
My father had confessed to errors before, but only in the abstract, where nobody could invoice him for them.
He sat on the edge of the desk.
“I expanded too quickly after the Stamford project.”
His fingers worried at a loose thread on his cuff.
“I thought if I got big enough, one bad year couldn’t hurt us again.”
“And instead?”
“I made us fragile in a different direction.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
From the dining room came a burst of laughter.
It sounded impossible in there.
“I’m not asking you to fix it,” he said.
I met his eyes.
“I think part of you is.”
He looked down.
“Probably.”
That answer hurt more than a denial.
Because it was honest.
I folded my arms.
“Alexander cannot hand you Horizon.”
“I understand.”
“And if he could, I wouldn’t ask.”
He nodded.
“I understand that too.”
I went to the door.
“Emma.”
I stopped.
“I’m sorry about tonight.”
The apology was so quiet I nearly missed it.
I turned.
He did not look at me.
“That’s not enough.”
“I know.”
It was the first thing he had said all evening that I believed completely.
I opened the study door and found Alexander standing in the hallway with his coat folded over one arm.
He had not been listening.
I knew because he was examining one of my mother’s framed family photographs with the bewilderment of a man trying to understand why every Whitmore child had been dressed in matching navy sweaters for seven consecutive Christmases.
“You survived,” he said.
“Barely.”
My father came out behind me.
Alexander looked at him, then at me.
He did not ask what had been said.
That was one of the reasons I had agreed to marry him.
He understood that privacy and secrecy were not the same thing.
My father returned to the dining room without speaking.
Alexander waited until he was gone.
“Do you want to leave?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Then I looked toward the table.
Vanessa was cutting Sophie’s pie into smaller pieces.
Logan was pouring coffee for Aunt Claire.
My mother was collecting plates too quickly, stacking china in a way she normally considered barbaric.
I had spent most of my life believing that walking away would feel clean.
It did not.
“I need five minutes.”
Alexander nodded.
“I’ll be near the terrifying ceramic turkey.”
He moved toward the foyer.
I went into the kitchen.
My mother was already there.
She stood at the sink with both hands braced against the counter.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
The dishwasher hummed beneath us.
Someone in the dining room asked whether there was whipped cream left.
My mother answered automatically.
“Top shelf of the refrigerator.”
Then she looked at me.
“Your father spoke to you.”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That’s between us.”
Her face tightened.
“You’re doing this deliberately.”
“Doing what?”
“Punishing me.”
I stared at her.
She took a plate from the counter and scrubbed at a spot that was already clean.
“I know tonight wasn’t handled well.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“I was overwhelmed.”
“So was I.”
“You always take everything personally.”
The old reflex arrived so naturally she did not seem to notice it.
I almost let it pass.
Then I remembered Alexander’s question about what I was protecting.
“No,” I said.
She glanced over.
“No what?”
“No, I don’t always take everything personally.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do know what you mean.”
I stepped closer to the counter.
“You mean if something hurts me, that’s my problem because you didn’t mean for it to hurt.”
She put the plate down.
“I’m not having some psychological argument with you on Thanksgiving.”
“It isn’t psychological.”
“Then what is it?”
“You took away my chair.”
Her lips parted.
May you like
I kept going before I lost the nerve.
“You told me to stay in the kitchen because Vanessa wanted a peaceful dinner.”
