Chương 3
I waited.
“You could help stop that.”
“How?”
“Arthur wants a written statement from you by nine tomorrow morning.”
“About Camila?”
“About the financial arrangements.”
He walked into the bedroom and began pacing between the bed and the windows.
“I can explain the personal situation.”
“Two years is a situation?”
“For Christ’s sake, Nora.”
Mia stirred in the room across the hall.
Both of us went quiet automatically.
That instinct hurt more than I expected.
We still knew how to be parents together in tiny, practiced ways even while everything else was collapsing.
Gavin lowered his voice.
“The board doesn’t care who I sleep with.”
“I care.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
He rubbed his mouth.
“All right.”
The word came out exhausted rather than apologetic.
“I screwed up.”
“You maintained a second relationship for two years.”
“I said I screwed up.”
“You’re saying it like you missed a mortgage payment.”
“What do you want me to do, Nora, invent a different word?”
I looked at him and saw something worse than cruelty.
I saw inconvenience.
My pain had become another problem on a night full of problems.
“Did company money buy the necklace?”
He stopped pacing.
“I’m not discussing corporate finances with you.”
“Then I’m not discussing them with Arthur for you.”
His shoulders tightened.
“I gave Camila gifts.”
“With what money?”
“My money.”
“The same money that couldn’t buy Mia’s medication this morning?”
“That was different.”
“Explain the difference.”
He looked toward the hallway.
When he spoke again, his voice had softened.
“You’ve never understood how my compensation works.”
The old Nora would have heard expertise in that sentence.
Tonight I heard camouflage.
I stood and carried the firebox toward the dresser.
Gavin moved into my path.
“Open it.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
“My father left it to me.”
“Your father left you practically nothing.”
I felt the letter inside the box as distinctly as if it were pressed against my skin.
“How do you know?”
He frowned.
“Because we handled the estate.”
“You handled the estate.”
“Because you couldn’t.”
I remembered those weeks after Dad died.
I had slept badly, forgotten appointments, once driven halfway to preschool before realizing it was Saturday.
Gavin had taken papers from my hands and told me he would deal with everything.
I had thanked him.
The memory embarrassed me now, which was unfair to the woman I had been.
Grief was not stupidity.
Trust was not stupidity either, though I was not yet ready to believe that.
“Move,” I said.
He did not.
I stepped around him.
This time he let me.
I carried the box into Mia’s room and placed it beneath the chair where I sometimes sat when her asthma kept her awake.
Gavin watched from the doorway.
“You’re behaving irrationally.”
“I’m going to sleep in here.”
“You can’t seriously think I would hurt you.”
I looked at him.
He flinched.
It was almost imperceptible.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He walked away.
Ten minutes later, I heard the guest-room door close.
I did not sleep.
At 2:13 in the morning, I finished reading my father’s letter.
The truth was less magical than the first documents had made it seem.
Dad had not secretly owned Summit Crest outright.
Twenty-three years earlier, he had supplied much of the early capital to three founders through an investment partnership, then accumulated additional voting shares during two restructurings.
His name rarely appeared publicly because the holdings were distributed through the Vance Family Trust and managed by professional trustees.
The trust currently controlled fifty-one percent of voting rights, but I could not simply walk into Summit Crest and declare myself queen.
Dad had anticipated that misconception.
Ownership is leverage, Nora, not competence.
Do not confuse the two.
I laughed quietly enough not to wake Mia.
It sounded exactly like him.
The letter identified the current trustee, Margaret Sloan, and instructed me to contact her if I ever needed to understand the trust.
Dad had also written something I read four times.
Gavin has asked questions about Summit Crest’s ownership structure that I consider unusual.
I have not told him about your beneficial interest.
I hope my concern proves unnecessary.
The letter was three years old.
I picked up my phone.
There were twenty-eight unread messages.
The newest was from Gavin, sent from the guest room.
Please think about Mia before you destroy her father’s career.
I stared at it until the screen dimmed.
Then I took photographs of every page in the firebox and emailed copies to an account Gavin did not know existed.
At seven, Mia woke up asking for pancakes.
Children have an astonishing ability to drag catastrophe into ordinary life.
She sat at the kitchen island in dinosaur pajamas while I burned the first pancake because I was reading an email from Summit Crest’s general counsel.
“Mommy.”
“One second.”
“You’re making smoke.”
I dropped the phone.
The pancake had become a black disk.
Mia considered it.
“Daddy would eat that.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
“He absolutely would not.”
“He eats burned steak.”
“He calls that charred.”
“What’s charred?”
“Expensive burned.”
She giggled.
Gavin entered halfway through the second batch.
He was freshly shaved and dressed for work despite being suspended.
Mia raised both arms.
“Daddy.”
He kissed the top of her head.
Whatever else Gavin was, his affection for her had never looked false to me.
That made his threat from the elevator harder to understand, not easier.
“Feeling better, bug?”
She nodded with her mouth full.
He checked the inhaler on the counter.
“Did you give her the morning dose?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Then he looked at me.
The warmth disappeared without transition.
“We need to talk.”
“After breakfast.”
“Now.”
Mia’s eyes moved between us.
I put another pancake on her plate.
“After breakfast.”
Gavin opened his mouth, then apparently noticed what she was noticing.
“Fine.”
He poured coffee.
May you like
For six minutes, we performed a grotesque imitation of a normal family.
Mia told us a boy named Caleb had eaten paste at school.
