Part 5
My darling girl,
Martin told me where you are. I begged him not to, and then I begged him to take me to you.
Henry says if I leave, he will destroy Clara’s future and say I helped you steal. I wish I could tell you I am brave enough not to care. I am not. I am ashamed of that. I am afraid of him, and I am afraid you will see what I allowed.
I signed papers I did not read. I believed him when belief was easier. I have no excuse that will make you love me again.
Clara sat down.
The letter was dated fourteen months after Julia disappeared.
“She knew,” Clara said.
“Only briefly,” Martin replied. “She wrote that letter. She asked me to deliver it. Julia sent it back.”
“Why?”
Nora answered. “Mom said your mother wanted forgiveness more than she wanted to leave him.”
Clara flinched at the harshness.
Elena touched Nora’s arm. “That was your mother’s judgment. It doesn’t have to be yours.”
“It was true.”
“It can be true and still be more complicated.”
Nora looked away.
Clara folded the letter along its old crease. “Did my mother know Julia had a child?”
“No,” Martin said.
“Did my father?”
“No.”
“Did Julia know he died?”
“Yes.”
Henry Mercer had died eleven years earlier. The company issued a statement describing him as a visionary builder of American industry. Clara had delivered the eulogy. Martin had stood in the front pew.
She had spoken about loyalty.
The recollection made her physically nauseated.
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth.
Nora nudged the water bottle toward her.
Clara took it.
The simple kindness embarrassed them both. Nora stared at the floor. Clara drank, then set the bottle between them as though they now shared ownership.
“Why didn’t Julia come back after he died?” Clara asked.
Martin looked toward Elena, but Elena shook her head. “That isn’t mine to answer.”
Nora said, “She tried.”
Clara waited.
“When?”
“After the funeral.”
Clara searched her memory of those days. The house crowded with flowers. Employees she did not know telling stories about her father’s generosity. Security at the gates because someone had sent threats after a factory closure. Martin moving between rooms with a phone against his ear.
“I was there,” Nora said. “But I was a baby.”
“She brought you?”
“She drove to the house,” Elena explained. “She stayed across the road.”
Clara looked at Martin.
He rubbed his thumb against his finger again.
“You saw her,” Clara said.
“Yes.”
“You told her to leave.”
“I told her the house was full of press, directors, former employees, and people loyal to your father. There had been threats. She had an infant in the car.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No. I did not tell her simply to leave.”
“What did you say?”
Martin’s voice lowered. “I said you were not ready.”
Clara stared at him.
“How would you know?”
“You had spent twenty-one years believing she abandoned you.”
“Because you helped everyone teach me that.”
“Yes.”
“So you decided I could not survive the truth.”
“I decided the funeral was not the place.”
“And the next day?”
“She stopped answering.”
Nora’s mouth tightened. “She waited three months.”
Martin looked at her. “She changed her number.”
“After three months.”
“I sent letters.”
“To an address she had left.”
“I did not know that.”
“You knew how to find her whenever the company needed a signature.”
Elena intervened. “Nora.”
“No. He says things so they sound accidental.”
Martin accepted this without defense.
Clara watched him. As a child she had believed Martin knew how to fix anything because he never raised his voice. When a pipe burst at the lake house, he called someone. When her father fired the driver in a rage, Martin arranged another job for the man without telling Henry. When Clara was caught shoplifting a silver bracelet at fourteen, Martin returned it and sat with her in a diner for two hours, drinking coffee while she cried into a paper napkin.
He had been kind to her.
That was the shape of the damage. Not a monster in a dark room. A man who knew when she took sugar in her coffee and still decided she could live without her sister.
“Why were you taking the portfolio to New York?” Clara asked.
Martin looked exhausted now, not merely old. “A law firm there holds the trust Julia used for Nora. Julia instructed them to release control to a court-appointed guardian after her death.”
“Then why not send copies?”
“The original identity records are required to unwind the trust.”
“Are they?”
“Some are.”
“Which ones?”
He looked at the files.
Clara understood.
“You mixed them together.”
“I intended to separate them on the train.”
Elena made a disbelieving sound.
Martin’s face reddened slightly. “My flight was canceled. I had a board call. The train was the remaining practical option.”
“You were taking Clara’s letter to New York?” Elena asked.
“No.”
“You were carrying it.”
“I had not finished reviewing the portfolio.”
“You had three days.”
“I had other obligations.”
Nora kicked the leg of her chair once. “Mom died and he had meetings.”
“That is unfair,” Martin said.
The anger in his voice surprised them. It surprised him too.
Nora’s eyes widened, but she did not retreat. “You told her you would come back.”
“I was in Zurich.”
“You came back nine days later.”
“I came as soon as I could.”
“She was unconscious.”
Martin stood.
Elena rose immediately.
He did not move toward Nora. He walked to the small window in the door and stared into the corridor.
“When did she die?” Clara asked.
Nora’s fingers curled around the edge of the chair. “March eighteenth.”
“What was she like?”
Martin turned slightly, but the question was not for him.
Nora looked suspicious. “Before she was sick?”
“Any time.”
Nora considered.
“She hated bananas.”
May you like
Clara blinked.
“She said the smell stayed in a room after the banana was gone. She checked the stove three times even when she didn’t cook. She drew on receipts when she was on the phone. Mostly squares inside other squares.”
