Chương 5
Dad.
Not Harrison.
Not that man.
Dad.
I opened the oven.
Smoke rolled out.
“No,” I said.
Then I looked at the blackened pizza.
“Maybe a little.”
Eli climbed onto a stool.
“So he makes food burn?”
“Apparently.”
“That’s a bad power.”
Noah waved a dish towel beneath the smoke detector.
“It’s working.”
“It isn’t working.”
“It stopped beeping.”
“Because I turned it off.”
“Oh.”
We ordered Chinese food.
The boys ate on the living-room floor because I did not have the energy to enforce the table rule.
Miles separated every piece of broccoli from his noodles.
Eli asked whether Harrison liked basketball.
Noah asked nothing.
That worried me more.
At eight thirty, after showers and an argument about whether discovering one’s billionaire father justified staying up late, I found Noah sitting on the edge of his bed with his tablet.
The screen showed a photograph of Harrison at some charity gala.
He was wearing a tuxedo and standing beside a senator whose name I recognized.
Noah enlarged the image.
“You said no internet searches tonight.”
“You said no weird internet searches.”
“They are all weird tonight.”
He set the tablet down.
“Was he mean to you?”
I sat beside him.
The mattress dipped under my weight.
“Yes.”
Noah’s mouth tightened.
“Were you mean to him?”
The question surprised me.
“Yes.”
“Like how?”
“I said things to hurt him.”
“Because he hurt you?”
“Sometimes.”
He picked at a loose thread on his blanket.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No.”
His elementary-school moral certainty made me feel unexpectedly small.
He looked at the photo again.
“Does he want us?”
I had been waiting for that question since the airport.
“He wants to know you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I reached over and turned the tablet facedown.
“I think he wants you.”
Noah looked at me.
“You think?”
“I met him again today for the first time in five years.”
“But you know him.”
“I knew him.”
“That’s different?”
“Yes.”
He considered that.
Then he pulled the blanket over his legs even though the room was warm.
“What if he only wants us because he found out we exist?”
“That is usually when people start wanting things they didn’t know existed.”
“No, I mean what if it’s because we’re his.”
There was the fear beneath the questions.
Not whether Harrison would reject them.
Whether he would claim them.
I brushed Noah’s hair back from his forehead.
“You are not property.”
“He’s rich.”
“That does not change the answer.”
“Rich people get stuff.”
“Not children.”
He looked unconvinced.
I could not blame him.
The truth was that Harrison’s money did change things.
It changed the quality of attorneys.
It changed access.
It changed how long a person could afford to fight.
It changed how many experts could be hired to describe the same set of facts.
I knew because I had survived one war with him.
I kissed Noah’s forehead.
“Nobody is taking you anywhere.”
“Promise?”
The word sat between us.
I had learned not to make promises about outcomes I could not control.
So I chose one I could.
“I promise I will not make decisions about you because I’m scared of him.”
Noah looked disappointed by the precision.
Then he nodded.
“Okay.”
When I checked my phone after all three bedroom doors were closed, Harrison had sent one more message.
I’m at the Langham.
I have not contacted anyone.
No lawyers.
No security.
No investigators.
I am asking you to believe me for one night.
I stood alone in the hallway reading it.
Then another message appeared.
Also, Miles’s airplane is still in my pocket.
I frowned.
A photograph followed.
It showed a crushed second paper airplane on a hotel desk.
Not Miles’s.
A copy.
Harrison had apparently tried to recreate it from memory.
The nose was too narrow.
One wing was absurdly short.
Against my better judgment, I laughed.
The sound felt almost obscene in the quiet house.
Then my phone rang.
Harrison.
I let it ring four times before answering.
“You said tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you calling?”
His breathing was audible for a moment.
“Because I found the letters.”
I leaned against the wall.
“What letters?”
“The ones my attorneys said they never received.”
Every trace of humor left me.
“Harrison.”
“They received them.”
I closed my eyes.
On the other end, he said, “Chloe, somebody made sure I never knew about the boys.”
I did not answer immediately.
The hallway light cast a thin yellow strip beneath the boys’ bedroom doors.
Harrison said my name again.
“What did you find?”
“Internal correspondence.”
“What kind?”
“Emails between my general counsel and someone in my executive office.”
I straightened.
“Someone?”
“I’m still figuring that out.”
“You just told me somebody made sure you never knew.”
“I said that because the emails are clear about the objective.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Read one.”
He was silent for a moment.
Then paper shifted near the receiver.
“Do we have confirmation that Sterling has not personally reviewed the prenatal notice?”
My stomach dropped.
Harrison continued.
“Answer: Confirmed.”
I stared at the framed school photograph hanging opposite me.
Noah was missing one front tooth.
Eli had blinked.
Miles had refused to smile because his shirt collar was bothering him.
“Who sent it?”
“An associate in outside counsel.”
“To whom?”
“My deputy chief of staff at the time.”
“Name.”
“Chloe.”
“Name.”
He exhaled.
“Rebecca Vale.”
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca.
Of course I remembered her.
Everyone remembered Rebecca.
She had worked beside Harrison for almost six years, first as an analyst, then as a special projects director, then as the person who seemed to know his schedule before he did.
She was composed without being cold, efficient without becoming memorable in the obvious way.
At company dinners, she sat near the end of the table and noticed when someone’s glass was empty.
May you like
At board meetings, she had the correct document open before anyone asked for it.
When Harrison and I were still married, I had once joked that if the building caught fire, Rebecca would already have distributed evacuation maps and booked replacement conference rooms.
