Part 7
Avery was quiet.
Then she said, “Thank you.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“I am sorry I did not stop this sooner.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I mean before today.”
Avery breathed out slowly.
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what to say to that yet.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
Another silence.
“Are you going to apologize to Daniel?” Avery asked.
“For hitting him.”
“Good.”
Elena opened her eyes.
“You think I should?”
“I think he’ll use it forever if you don’t.”
“That is not why I should.”
“No,” Avery said. “But it’s why you should do it clearly.”
Elena almost smiled.
“You sound like Nora.”
“That’s because Nora is usually right.”
“She has been spreading that rumor.”
Avery made a small sound that might have been a laugh.
It was the first unguarded sound Elena had heard from her all day.
The next morning, Avery gave a statement at a county police station with a lawyer present. Elena did not sit beside her during the interview. She waited in the lobby with Nora because Avery had asked for space.
The lobby smelled of burnt coffee and wet wool. A vending machine hummed in the corner. A deputy argued quietly with a printer that had eaten three pages of a form.
Elena watched people come and go.
A man in work boots filled out paperwork with a child-support envelope tucked under his arm. An elderly woman asked twice where the restroom was. Two young officers discussed lunch with the seriousness of diplomats.
Ordinary life continued beside Avery’s worst afternoon.
Nora folded the receipt from the parking garage into smaller and smaller squares.
“You’ll destroy it,” Elena said.
“It has served its purpose.”
“Not everything must become efficient.”
Nora looked at the tiny square in her hand.
“Is that today’s lesson?”
“One of them.”
Avery emerged after an hour and forty minutes.
Her hair was tied loosely at the nape of her neck. She wore a gray sweater and no makeup. The faint pressure mark near her scalp was hidden.
“How was it?” Elena asked.
“Repetitive.”
“That is often the point.”
“They asked why I didn’t leave when Beatrice spoke to me in the corridor.”
Elena felt anger rise.
Avery saw it.
“The lawyer handled it.”
“What did you say?”
“That I thought she wanted to talk. That the ballroom was full of people. That I didn’t think she would put her hands on me.”
She looked toward the glass station doors.
“I said I thought Daniel would stop her.”
Elena did not answer.
They walked outside.
The air had turned colder overnight. Avery tucked her hands into her sleeves.
“I don’t want to go to Greyhaven,” she said.
“All right.”
“But I need clothes from my office.”
“Nora can collect them.”
“I can do it.”
“You do not have to prove that.”
“I’m not proving anything. I need my laptop, and Nora won’t know which charger is mine because I have three that all look the same.”
Nora said, “A compelling operational argument.”
Avery glanced at her.
“Thank you.”
They returned to the estate by the service drive.
The ballroom doors were open. Staff had removed the luncheon tables, but the velvet chair remained where it had been. Its back faced the marble steps.
Avery stopped at the threshold.
Elena noticed too late.
“We can use another corridor.”
“No.”
Avery entered.
Her pace slowed as she approached the chair. She did not touch it. For several seconds, she looked at the place where her hand had crushed the velvet.
Then she turned to Miriam, who was supervising two staff members near the windows.
“Can you move that chair?”
“Of course,” Miriam said.
“Not out of the room. Just somewhere else.”
Miriam nodded.
Avery continued toward the foundation offices.
Elena remained behind.
Miriam waited until Avery disappeared through the east corridor.
“Where would you like it?” she asked.
Elena looked around the enormous room.
“Anywhere she doesn’t have to see it first.”
They moved the chair beside a bookcase near the musicians’ alcove.
It was a small change. The room absorbed it without protest.
In Avery’s office, a vase of luncheon flowers sat on her desk. Someone had placed them there before the event. White roses leaned heavily against one another, beginning to brown at the edges.
Avery unplugged her laptop.
Elena stood in the doorway.
“May I ask you something?”
Avery wrapped the charger cord around her hand. “You’re going to anyway.”
“That was almost rude.”
“I’m recovering.”
Elena accepted it.
“Why did you bring the report here instead of having it delivered to your home?”
Avery stopped winding the cord.
“I didn’t.”
Elena felt the skin at the back of her neck tighten.
“What?”
“The clinic had my home address.”
Nora, standing in the corridor, turned.
Avery opened her desk drawer and removed an appointment card.
“I never changed the delivery information.”
“Could the clinic have used your employment record?” Nora asked.
“They don’t have it.”
“Did you ask for courier delivery?”
“Yes. To my apartment.”
Elena looked at Nora.
Nora was already taking out her phone.
“Do not call the clinic yet,” Avery said.
Nora paused.
“Why not?”
“Because I want the lawyer to do it.”
Elena studied her goddaughter.
Avery placed the appointment card inside her laptop case.
“Beatrice knew the report was coming,” she said. “Daniel knew the clinic. Someone changed the address.”
Nora’s expression hardened by a degree.
“I signed for the envelope,” she said. “It was addressed to you, care of Greyhaven.”
“I never authorized that.”
Elena thought of Beatrice’s certainty, her insistence that Avery had chosen the luncheon, Daniel’s accusation that she had used the report as leverage.
The lie had been prepared before Avery entered the ballroom.
“Why?” Elena asked.
Avery lifted the laptop case.
“To make it look like I brought it here.”
Nora said, “Or to place it within reach.”
Avery’s face lost color.
Elena moved closer.
“No one opened it.”
May you like
“I know.”
“Do you want it removed from the house?”
