Chương 3
Nathan watched Lily through the glass. The girl had finally taken one sip of hot chocolate. Her eyes remained on the infant.
“Margaret doesn’t do anything anonymously.”
“People change when they run out of time.”
“My mother believes time is an administrative problem.”
Evelyn folded her arms. “And what do you believe?”
“That somebody used a child to get through my front door.”
“You had two children at your door.”
Nathan looked at her.
“That girl has a name,” Evelyn said.
He turned back to the rain.
Mara entered ten minutes later carrying a legal pad. “Lily says her last name is Bell.”
Nathan moved away from the window. “Did she tell you where her mother is?”
“She says her mother’s name is Elena and that she was sick.”
“Where?”
“She won’t say.”
“Can she?”
Mara’s expression suggested she disliked questions that assumed a child’s silence had a simple explanation. “She may not know. She may be afraid. She may have been instructed not to tell us. She may be protecting someone.”
“Or someone may be threatening her.”
“Yes.”
“Have the police checked the estate wall?”
“They’re doing that now.”
Nathan nodded toward the envelope. “Open it.”
“I need law enforcement present.”
“My name is on it.”
“That does not make the contents yours.”
“It was attached to a child brought to my home.”
“That makes it evidence in a child safety investigation.”
William Cross arrived before the detective did. He entered the consultation room in a camel overcoat and rain-darkened loafers, his thinning gray hair combed with more precision than the morning deserved.
“What have you said?” he asked Nathan.
“Good morning, William.”
“To the investigator. To the doctors. To the police.”
“I told them my name.”
“Try to keep it there.”
Mara looked up from her notes. “And you are?”
“William Cross. Counsel for Mr. Carter.”
“Mr. Carter isn’t under investigation at this time.”
“Then we agree this is the ideal moment to protect his position.”
Lily watched from the other room. Nathan saw her take in William’s expensive coat, his leather document case, the way he placed himself between Nathan and everyone else.
Nathan had once found that reassuring.
“Leave,” he said.
William turned. “Excuse me?”
“You’re frightening her.”
“I’m standing in a room.”
“You’ve always managed to make that sound billable.”
Evelyn coughed into her hand.
William lowered his voice. “Nathan, we need to speak privately.”
“Later.”
“There may not be a later in which this remains private.”
“That isn’t my first concern.”
“It has to be one of them.”
Mara closed her legal pad. “Mr. Cross, you can remain if your client wants you here, but you will not interfere with my interviews.”
William looked at Nathan.
Nathan said, “Sit down or go home.”
William sat.
Detective Rosa Delgado arrived with a hospital security officer. She photographed the envelope again, documented the tape, and asked Nathan to identify the handwriting without touching anything.
“It appears to be my mother’s,” he said.
“Appears?”
“I’m familiar with it.”
“Would anyone else recognize it?”
“Mrs. Harris. My assistant. Most of the staff who receive handwritten notes from her.”
“What’s your mother’s full name?”
“Margaret Anne Carter.”
“Where is she now?”
“At her home in Belle Haven, unless she’s changed plans.”
William shifted in his chair. Nathan felt the movement before he saw it.
Delgado noticed.
“You have something to add, Mr. Cross?”
“No.”
Nathan looked at him. “Do you know where she is?”
William rubbed one thumb across the edge of his phone. “Margaret has been in New York for medical appointments.”
“What appointments?”
“This is not the setting.”
Nathan’s voice stayed quiet. “What appointments?”
William met his eyes. “Oncology.”
The room changed without anyone moving.
Evelyn sat down.
Nathan had spoken to his mother three days earlier. She had complained about a museum board dispute, a florist who had confused cream roses with ivory, and a scratch on the rear door of her car. She had not mentioned cancer.
“How long?” he asked.
“I am not authorized to discuss her health.”
“You just did.”
“Because it’s now relevant to her location.”
“Is she dying?”
William’s face gave him the answer before the man’s caution rearranged it.
“She is ill.”
Nathan looked through the glass at the newborn.
Mara said, “We’re opening the envelope.”
Inside were eleven folded pages, a small brass key taped to an index card, and a letter in a separate envelope.
The first pages bore the letterhead of Halcyon Reproductive Medicine, a private clinic that had closed eight years earlier after a federal investigation into billing fraud. Nathan had been a patient there with his wife, Claire.
His knees felt unreliable. He sat before anyone could suggest it.
The records listed cryogenic storage numbers, genetic sample identifiers, embryo grading notes, and a transfer date from the previous year. Most of the medical language meant little to him, but he recognized his patient number.
He recognized Claire’s too.
The final page contained an authorization code.
VIOLET-413.
Nathan heard the rain against the windows and, beneath it, the faint mechanical hum of the infant warmer.
Claire had chosen that code in the kitchen of their old apartment while eating toast over the sink. Violets had been her mother’s favorite flower. Four-thirteen was the date Nathan had proposed, badly and without a ring, because Claire had said she could not endure another week of him pretending he had not bought one.
No one at the clinic should have retained the code after the embryos were ordered destroyed.
No one outside the clinic should have known it except Nathan, Claire, and Margaret.
William stood abruptly.
Nathan looked at him. “Sit down.”
“I need to make a call.”
“To my mother?”
“To outside counsel.”
“For whom?”
William did not answer.
Detective Delgado lifted the separate letter with gloved fingers. The paper was older than the other documents. Across the front, in Claire’s handwriting, was written Nathan.
He stopped breathing.
The newborn, quiet until then, opened his eyes.
May you like
Gray-blue.
The color was not proof. Nathan knew that. It was not evidence, not parentage, not science. It was only a pair of infant eyes adjusting to hospital light.
