Part 3
A security officer asked everyone to remain in place until police arrived. Reuben immediately objected that he had an appointment. Helen told him to cancel it.
“I didn’t see anything,” he said.
“You were standing six feet away.”
“I was looking toward the gallery.”
“You spoke to me while she was holding Clara.”
“I don’t remember where I was looking.”
Marjorie pulled off her remaining glove. “This is not the time.”
Helen turned to her. “It became the time when she fell.”
The paramedics knelt beside Clara and began asking questions. Her age. Weeks of pregnancy. Location of pain. Whether she had experienced contractions, bleeding, dizziness, or fluid loss.
Clara answered while watching Vivian.
The aunt who had controlled family dinners, hospital visits, funerals, trustees’ votes, and every public crisis of Clara’s childhood now stood silent among loose papers she could not touch.
Martin remained only a few steps away.
When a paramedic asked him to move aside, he obeyed so quickly the leather case struck the railing.
“What’s inside that?” Elias asked.
Martin tightened his grip.
“Legal documents.”
“Related to the holding company?”
“I can’t discuss client materials.”
“Whose client materials?”
Martin looked toward Vivian.
That was enough.
“Put the case on the floor,” Elias said.
“I’m not authorized to surrender it.”
“No one asked you to surrender it. Put it down and do not leave.”
Martin glanced at the security officers, then placed the case beside his shoe.
The paramedics wanted Clara on a stretcher.
“I can walk,” she said.
One of them, a woman with gray threaded through her dark hair, looked at Clara’s missing shoe and bruising hip.
“I believe you,” she said. “The stretcher is safer.”
Clara wanted to refuse simply because everyone expected her to agree. Then another tightening passed through her abdomen, not quite pain, more like a muscle drawing inward.
Her hand flew to the spot.
Elias saw.
“So did the paramedic.
They moved more quickly after that.
As they secured the straps, Vivian came down one more step.
“I’ll follow you to the hospital.”
“No,” Clara said.
“Your husband is in Chicago.”
“I called him,” Elias said.
Vivian looked at him. “You called Adrian before speaking to me?”
“He is her husband.”
“I am her closest relative in the city.”
Clara turned her head on the stretcher.
“No,” she said again.
Something crossed Vivian’s face then that was not merely anger. Hurt, perhaps, or the shock of discovering that a role she had claimed for years could be revoked in a single word.
The paramedics carried Clara down the stairs.
As they passed the scattered documents, she saw the ribboned certificate that had fallen near the railing. The seal belonged to Whitmore Archives Holdings, the private corporation that owned the foundation’s buildings and several surrounding properties.
She had been told for years that the company was an administrative shell.
Her father’s signature appeared at the bottom.
Beneath it, in blue ink, was Vivian’s.
Outside, cold air struck Clara’s face.
Across the street, a delivery cyclist argued with the driver of a double-parked van. A woman in running clothes waited for the light while eating half a banana. The city continued with insulting normality.
Elias climbed into the ambulance after asking permission.
The doors closed.
Clara looked at him. “What did you mean, sole owner?”
He sat on the bench opposite her. “You appear to own the sole voting share of Archives Holdings.”
“Appear?”
“I saw one document.”
“You announced it to the entire atrium.”
“I was preventing Vivian from taking the records.”
“You could have said they were evidence.”
“I should have.”
The admission came without defense.
The paramedic attached monitoring equipment and asked Clara to rate her pain. She chose four because three seemed too low and five seemed dramatic.
“What does the company own?” Clara asked.
“The archives building. Two adjoining townhouses. A storage warehouse. Certain licensing rights.”
“And the foundation?”
“The foundation is a nonprofit corporation. No one owns it.”
“I know that.”
“Yes.”
“You said I was the sole owner.”
“Of the holding company.”
“What does the voting share control?”
Elias hesitated.
Clara stared at him.
“It carries the right to nominate four of the foundation’s nine trustees.”
The ambulance began to move.
Clara gripped the edge of the blanket. “Four.”
“Yes.”
“Vivian nominates four trustees.”
“She has exercised the right since your father became ill.”
“On what authority?”
“We believed she controlled the share through his estate.”
“You believed.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see the stock certificate?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
“Not after your father’s death.”
The paramedic looked between them. “This conversation can wait.”
Clara turned toward her. “Can it?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “Whatever is in that book will still be there after we make sure your baby is safe.”
The bluntness silenced her.
At Pennsylvania Hospital, Clara was taken to obstetric triage. A nurse helped her remove the ivory dress and place it in a belongings bag. A spreading bruise had darkened the side of her hip. The sight made the fall more real than the pain had.
Two monitors were secured around her abdomen.
A rapid heartbeat filled the room.
Clara closed her eyes.
The sound was too fast to be comforting until the nurse said, “That’s your baby.”
“Is it normal?”
“At the moment, yes.”
“At the moment?”
The nurse adjusted the strap. “That’s what we can tell you honestly.”
A resident examined her, then explained that the tracing looked reassuring but placental complications could appear after trauma. Clara would need several hours of monitoring, possibly overnight.
“Is there a chance—”
“There is always a chance,” the resident said gently. “Right now, I am not seeing signs that something is wrong.”
Clara nodded.
She wanted certainty and resented anyone who pretended certainty was available.
Elias waited near the door, his charcoal suit wrinkled at the knee where he had knelt on the stairs. Someone brought him coffee. He held it without drinking.
May you like
The nurse finished adjusting the monitor and left.
Clara stared at the ceiling.
