Part 5
Julian found her in the hallway.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She wiped under her eyes. “You can’t keep putting me in the middle.”
“I’m trying to keep us from being erased.”
“No one is erasing us.”
“You don’t see it because you grew up inside it.”
“Inside what?”
“His control.”
He glanced toward the conference-room door.
“When that baby is born, every decision will require your father’s approval. The hospital. The house. Schools. Money. He’ll call it protection, and one day you’ll realize we never built a family. We just became another department of Whitmore.”
Claire wanted to reject the accusation. Instead she pictured her father asking which pediatrician they had chosen, which car seat they had bought, whether the nursery windows had been tested for lead.
Thomas would ask all of those things.
He would believe each question was love.
Julian touched her cheek. “I need you to choose us.”
She closed her eyes.
“What does that mean?”
“Amend the trust. Name me co-trustee. Give me voting authority if you’re incapacitated.”
The second request did not belong with the first.
Claire opened her eyes. “Voting authority over the company?”
“It funds the trust.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It is if the board freezes distributions.”
“Why would they?”
“Because your father trained them to treat me like a threat.”
The hallway suddenly felt too narrow.
“This is about Whitmore again.”
“This is about our child.”
“You asked for voting authority.”
“To protect our child’s assets.”
“The independent trustee does that.”
Julian stepped back. The warmth left his face.
“You already decided.”
“No. I’m listening.”
“No, you’re waiting for me to stop talking.”
He returned to the meeting alone.
Claire stayed in the hallway until Eleanor Voss emerged carrying her legal pad.
The retired judge did not offer comfort. She stood beside Claire and looked at an oil portrait of a long-dead attorney mounted across from the elevators.
“He has unfortunate eyebrows,” Eleanor said.
Claire gave a wet laugh.
“The man in the portrait?”
“Your fiancé.”
That startled another laugh out of her, smaller and unwilling.
Eleanor glanced at Claire’s stomach, not yet visibly rounded beneath her coat.
“You are allowed to take time.”
“Everyone keeps needing an answer.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound like I’m allowed.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “It sounds like they are impatient.”
The trust was not amended.
Julian did not mention it for two weeks.
Then Claire received a call from Whitmore’s general counsel asking whether she had authorized a proposed proxy designation naming Julian as her representative for shareholder matters.
She was sitting in her car outside a pharmacy, eating saltines from the sleeve.
“What proxy designation?”
The attorney became careful. “A draft was circulated.”
“By whom?”
“It appears to have originated from Mr. Mercer’s office.”
“He doesn’t have an office at Whitmore.”
A pause.
“No. He does not.”
Claire drove home but remained in the garage after turning off the engine. The security app would have told Julian she had arrived. She wondered whether he would come down.
He did not.
She found him in the kitchen, speaking on the phone. He saw her and ended the call.
“You sent the board a proxy.”
“A draft.”
“You said you stopped.”
“I said I wouldn’t pressure you.”
“What do you call sending documents behind my back?”
“Preparing.”
“For what?”
“For reality.”
His answer came too quickly.
Claire placed her keys on the counter.
“What reality?”
Julian rubbed both hands over his face. “Your father’s health is not stable.”
“He had surgery eight months ago. His doctors are pleased.”
“His doctors aren’t running a company.”
“Neither are you.”
The sentence landed.
Julian stared at her.
Claire had never spoken to him that way. The surprise in his face produced an immediate, humiliating urge to soften it.
She resisted.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked.
“No one.”
“You were on the phone.”
“Nathan.”
“Pike?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He’s my attorney.”
“Since when?”
“Since your father made me need one.”
Claire felt the passenger turn or stretch inside her, though at sixteen weeks the sensation might have been nothing more than muscle.
“Show me the proxy.”
“It’s a draft.”
“Show me.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. “You don’t understand the structure.”
“Then explain it.”
“I have tried.”
“No, you’ve told me everyone is against you.”
“Because they are.”
He walked past her toward the dining room. Claire followed.
“You used my name.”
“I prepared a document for your review.”
“You circulated it to the board.”
“To counsel.”
“Without telling me.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Because I found out.”
He turned.
The movement was fast enough that Claire stopped.
Julian saw it. His expression changed. He looked at the distance between them, then at her stomach.
“I wasn’t going to touch you.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You moved like you thought I would.”
“I was surprised.”
“By me turning around?”
The conversation shifted, as conversations with Julian often did, away from what he had done and toward the injury of how she perceived him.
Claire lowered her voice. “I want to see every document you sent.”
He laughed once.
“I cannot live under investigation.”
“I’m asking about a document with my name on it.”
“You want to know what I sent? Fine. Ask your father. He probably has copies already.”
He left the house.
At eleven that night he texted that he was staying at Evelyn’s apartment.
Claire did not sleep.
She sat in the nursery they had not begun furnishing and watched headlights move across the ceiling. At two in the morning she opened Julian’s desk drawer.
She had never searched his things before.
The drawer contained pens, old receipts, a passport wallet, and a stack of business cards held by a rubber band. Nothing useful. Nothing incriminating. She felt ashamed.
Then she noticed that the bottom panel sat higher at the back.
May you like
The false.
She sat in the nursery they had not begun furnishing and watched headlights move across the ceiling. At two in the morning she opened Julian’s desk drawer.
