Chương 4
Madeline said nothing.
“My company had been sold. We were finally out from under the hours and the debt. You were doing another fertility cycle. Your father knew exactly what to say.”
“What did he say?”
“That if I started asking questions, I would destroy your family and mine.”
Madeline looked down at her belly.
“And then?”
“I found the draft trust.”
He spoke so quietly she almost missed it.
“The infant trust.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On a server I still had access to because one of his companies had used Hartwell for compliance work. I wasn’t searching for it. I was reviewing transfers tied to the accounts I’d signed.”
He swallowed.
“The document had been drafted before we conceived. It named your future child as beneficiary.”
Madeline pressed both hands around Ethan’s phone.
“You knew before Christmas.”
“Yes.”
“You knew while I was taking injections.”
“Yes.”
She could see those weeks too clearly.
The bruises across her stomach.
The alarm on her phone every evening.
Ethan washing his hands before preparing injections because she hated doing them herself.
The plastic sharps container hidden inside a decorative basket because she did not want to look at it during breakfast.
They had already endured one failed cycle.
A chemical pregnancy.
Three months of pretending not to mind friends’ baby announcements.
Then December.
Hope had entered the house carefully.
And he had known.
She looked at him.
“Did you ever think about telling me?”
“Every day.”
“That is not the same as telling me.”
“I know.”
“Did the FBI tell you not to?”
“After I contacted them, yes.”
“Before you contacted them?”
His silence answered.
Madeline stood.
Ethan stood too.
She pointed toward the door.
“I want you off the boat.”
“Madeline, you should not be alone.”
“I’m not alone. There’s crew.”
“Come home with me. You can lock me out of the bedroom. I’ll sleep downstairs.”
“I do not want to sleep in a house with you tonight.”
“Then I’ll leave the house.”
She looked at him.
“That’s the first useful thing you’ve said.”
He accepted it.
That made her angrier.
“Stop looking like I hit a dog.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I don’t know what face you want me to make.”
“I don’t want anything from your face.”
He breathed out.
“All right.”
She hated the sudden ordinariness of that exchange.
Hated that fifteen minutes after learning her father had hidden thirty million dollars in her unborn child’s name and her husband had spent months cooperating with federal investigators, they could still sound like a married couple fighting about groceries.
Maybe that was marriage.
The enormous horror did not replace the small familiar machinery.
It merely poisoned it.
Ethan held out his hand.
“Can I have my phone?”
Madeline looked at it.
“No.”
He almost objected.
Then reconsidered.
“Okay.”
“Is there anything on here you’re afraid I’ll find?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him.
“Thank you for finally making this easy.”
“I mean there are things that will hurt you. Not things I’m hiding now.”
“Distinction without comfort.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His jaw moved.
He nodded.
Madeline turned away.
Behind her, Ethan remained still for several seconds.
Then she heard his footsteps crossing the teak floor.
At the door he stopped.
“If you have contractions, call your doctor.”
She closed her eyes.
“Go.”
He left.
Madeline stayed on the yacht because leaving required choosing where to go.
For twenty minutes, she sat in a room full of baby gifts she no longer wanted to open.
The crew moved quietly around her.
One of them, a young woman named Lacey who had spent the evening replenishing champagne she was not old enough to drink in every state, approached with a bottle of water.
“You should probably have this.”
Madeline accepted it.
“Thank you.”
Lacey stood there awkwardly.
“You want me to get rid of the sign?”
Madeline looked at the gold lettering.
WELCOME, BABY COLE.
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know why. Just not yet.”
“Okay.”
Lacey hesitated.
“My sister slapped her husband once.”
Madeline looked at her.
Lacey’s face went scarlet.
“Sorry. I have no idea why I said that.”
Madeline almost laughed.
“What happened?”
“They got divorced.”
“Great.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
This time Madeline did laugh.
It lasted three seconds and hurt her abdomen.
Lacey smiled apologetically.
Then, because human beings were strange, because catastrophe apparently did not prevent anyone from being twenty-two years old and socially clumsy, she said, “For what it’s worth, my sister’s husband definitely deserved it.”
Madeline drank her water.
“Mine may have.”
Lacey nodded solemnly.
Then she left Madeline alone.
The first person Madeline called was her obstetrician.
Not her lawyer.
Not Ethan.
Not her father’s attorney.
Her obstetrician’s answering service connected her to the doctor within four minutes.
Dr. Shah listened while Madeline explained, badly, that she had experienced two cramps during an FBI raid at her baby shower.
There was a pause.
“Those are words I haven’t heard in that order before,” Dr. Shah said.
Madeline put her hand over her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“Do not apologize. Are the contractions continuing?”
“No.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“Fluid?”
“No.”
“Baby moving?”
Madeline waited.
A small push answered against her palm.
“Yes.”
“Good. Drink water. Eat something if you haven’t. Lie down. If contractions become regular, if you have bleeding, if your water breaks, or if movement decreases, call immediately. And Madeline?”
“Yes?”
“Tonight is not the night to prove you can handle everything yourself.”
Madeline looked around the empty salon.
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
She called her college roommate next.
Samantha Ortega lived forty minutes away and answered on the second ring.
“What happened?”
Madeline frowned.
“How do you know something happened?”
“You’re calling instead of texting.”
Madeline began crying before she could speak.
Not dramatically.
No collapse.
Her body simply made the decision without consulting her.
Samantha listened.
When Madeline finished, Samantha said, “Where are you?”
“On the boat.”
“Your father’s boat?”
“Yes.”
“Get off your father’s crime boat.”
May you like
Despite herself, Madeline laughed.
“I don’t know if the boat is criminal.”
