Chương 8
“You have an attorney.”
“That’s one person.”
Elena almost smiled.
They left separately.
Within thirty minutes, photographs of them appeared online.
The headlines were worse than the truth.
BRIDE AND MISTRESS JOIN FORCES.
VALE WOMEN PLOT REVENGE.
Elena stared at her phone in Catherine’s office.
“Can I sue everyone?”
“No.”
“Disappointing.”
“Welcome to law.”
Elena put the phone down.
Catherine had received a letter from Victor’s attorney.
It offered a private settlement concerning the dissolution of Elena’s marriage.
The number attached was so large Elena first thought it was a typo.
She read it twice.
“Why?”
Catherine’s expression was dry.
“Peace.”
“That buys a country.”
“A small one, poorly located.”
“What are the conditions?”
“Confidentiality. Non-disparagement. No cooperation with media regarding the family. Return of private documents. Agreement not to assist Vanessa in any litigation or public claims.”
Elena looked up.
“There.”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Not primarily.”
“What happens if I refuse?”
“You get divorced without a ridiculous amount of money.”
“Good.”
Catherine held up a hand.
“Think before you become morally dramatic.”
Elena frowned.
“I don’t want it.”
“That is a financial decision, not a personality test.”
“I make my own salary.”
“Yes.”
“I was fine before Adrian.”
“Yes.”
“I will be fine after.”
“Probably. But do not refuse several million dollars simply because you enjoy the story it tells about you.”
Elena stared at her.
“You are extremely annoying.”
“I know.”
Catherine slid the offer back across the desk.
“Take twenty-four hours.”
Elena took it home.
Her father found her at the kitchen table after midnight.
He opened the refrigerator, looked inside, closed it.
Then opened it again.
“There’s still nothing new,” Elena said.
“I forgot what I wanted.”
He sat opposite her.
She showed him the number.
He whistled.
“That’s vulgar.”
“Catherine says I should think about it.”
“She’s right.”
“I don’t want Victor’s money.”
“Then don’t take it.”
Elena looked at him.
“That was fast.”
“I thought about it.”
“For two seconds.”
“I’m old. I think efficiently.”
She smiled.
Her father rubbed his hands together.
“You know what money does best?”
“What?”
“Turns things into math.”
Elena waited.
“He wants you to ask whether the number is enough. Then you stop asking what the agreement makes you do.”
Elena looked at the paper.
The paragraph about Vanessa was only four lines.
Her father pointed to it.
“Seems like that’s the expensive part.”
The next morning, Elena rejected the offer.
Victor called her personally.
She answered.
“Elena.”
“Victor.”
“I was hoping we could speak without intermediaries.”
“You hired three of them.”
A pause.
“You sound like your mother.”
“She’ll be devastated.”
“Elena, I want to apologize.”
She waited.
“For what?”
Another pause.
He had not expected the question.
“For the position you were put in.”
“Passive voice.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The position I was put in. The information that was concealed. The wedding that proceeded. Things keep happening by themselves in your sentences.”
Victor exhaled.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
“I believed I could resolve the matter without involving you.”
“You involved me when you asked Adrian to keep quiet until after the wedding.”
“I did not ask him to lie.”
“You asked him not to tell me the truth.”
“There is a distinction.”
“Only to people who hire expensive attorneys.”
Silence.
She pictured him in his office, perhaps standing by the window with the city beneath him.
He said, “I was trying to protect my son.”
“From what?”
“From a situation I created.”
That was more honest.
Elena sat down.
Victor continued.
“Adrian has spent much of his life cleaning up after me.”
“Why?”
“Because I let him.”
The answer surprised her.
“When Caroline was ill, I made him responsible for things a son should not have been responsible for. Doctors. Household decisions. The foundation. Me.”
Elena listened.
“I mistook his competence for consent,” Victor said.
“And then?”
“Then it became our habit.”
Elena looked at the rejected settlement offer on the table.
“You taught him that loving someone means helping them hide.”
Victor did not answer.
“You taught him that.”
“Yes.”
The word came quietly.
Elena closed her eyes.
She had expected resistance.
Admission was worse because it complicated hatred.
“Why did you sleep with Vanessa?”
Victor’s voice changed.
“That is not your concern.”
She almost laughed.
“It became my concern when you scheduled my marriage around it.”
Another silence.
Finally, Victor said, “Because she made me feel less old.”
The answer was pathetic.
Human.
Specific.
Elena wished he had said something monstrous.
“I liked that she did not know Caroline,” he continued. “She knew of her, obviously. But she had not watched my wife die. She did not look at me with sympathy. I was selfish.”
“Were you in love with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re sixty-one.”
“I’m aware.”
“You should know.”
“I have found age less clarifying than advertised.”
Elena almost smiled and resented him for it.
He continued.
“I ended it because I knew I was behaving badly.”
“And when she became pregnant, you behaved worse.”
“Yes.”
“Why the confidentiality?”
“Because I panicked.”
“You have lawyers who call panic strategy.”
“That is fair.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Victor went quiet.
Elena looked out the kitchen window at her father’s ruined hedge.
“What do you actually want from me?”
“I want you not to destroy Adrian because of what he learned from me.”
Elena’s anger returned so quickly it steadied her.
“I am not destroying Adrian.”
“No?”
“No. I am leaving him.”
“To him, that may feel—”
“I am not responsible for how consequences feel to the person who caused them.”
Victor said nothing.
Elena stood.
“And you do not get to make his betrayal another debt I owe your family.”
She hung up.
Her hands shook afterward.
She made tea and forgot to drink it.
Three days later, Elena met Adrian.
Not because Victor asked.
May you like
Because she needed to stop arguing with the version of him in her head.
They met in a public park at seven in the morning, before reporters had learned to look there.
