Chương 4
Margaret read the line again.
Her foundation.
She had chaired it for twenty-two years.
Schools.
Housing grants.
Rural hospitals.
She had signed thousands of disbursements.
Richard said, “You signed transfer authorizations you didn’t understand.”
Margaret’s head came up.
“I understood every transfer I signed.”
“You understood what was put in front of you.”
“What was put in front of me?”
Richard did not answer.
She stood so quickly that Ellie sat upright.
Margaret lowered herself again.
The child’s presence kept saving Richard from a version of his wife he had probably never met.
She continued reading.
Later I learned the foundation records were altered after your signature. I do not believe you knew. At the time, I couldn’t prove it. I was injured, frightened, and angry. Dad gave me a choice that did not feel like a choice. Disappear, and he would make sure the Redstone matter never touched you. Come home, and he said all of us would be destroyed.
I chose wrong.
I told myself I was protecting you.
The truth is I was also afraid.
Margaret pressed her lips together.
That sentence sounded like Daniel.
Not because it was noble.
Because it wasn’t.
Her son had never been good at making himself look better after the fact. Even as a teenager, apologies arrived stripped of decoration.
I broke the kitchen window.
I lied about the car.
I was mean to Lauren because she embarrassed me.
No elaborate reasons.
Just the bruise of the truth.
Margaret turned the page.
Richard has known where I was for most of the last eleven years. For a long time, he sent money through intermediaries. I stopped taking it after Noah was born. He still had people watching us.
Noah’s face tightened.
“Dad knew.”
Margaret looked at him.
“Knew what?”
“That men watched us.”
“How?”
“He would make us switch grocery stores. And he never let me put our address on school stuff if it wasn’t required. Mom hated it.”
“Your mother?”
“Maya.”
“Where is Maya now?”
Noah’s mouth trembled.
For the first time since entering the car, he looked seven.
“I don’t know.”
Margaret folded the letter.
“Tell me what happened today.”
Richard started to speak.
She held up a hand without looking at him.
“Noah.”
The boy stared into his hot chocolate.
His gloves were drying near a brass heating vent. Without them, his fingers looked painfully small.
“Dad picked us up from school early yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
Noah nodded.
“He said we were going on a trip. Mom was already packing. They were fighting, but quiet.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s okay.”
“Mom said, ‘We can’t keep running every time you see a black car.’ Dad said it was different this time.”
Mercer’s SUV waited outside.
Margaret did not turn toward it.
“What happened after that?”
“We drove to a hotel. Not a nice one.”
Richard’s eyes flickered.
Noah noticed.
“We don’t usually stay at nice hotels,” he said.
Richard looked down.
Margaret almost smiled despite herself.
Daniel had once told his father, at sixteen, that the best thing about wealth was how rarely rich people had to admit they were ridiculous.
Richard had grounded him.
Margaret had secretly thought the line deserved publication.
Noah continued.
“Dad left this morning. Mom got mad because he wouldn’t say where he was going. Then he came back around lunch with blood on his shirt.”
Margaret’s stomach tightened.
“His blood?”
“I think.”
“Was he hurt badly?”
“He said no. Mom said he was a liar.”
Again, painfully Daniel.
“He put stuff in my backpack. The picture. The letter. He told me if we got separated, I had to give the envelope to Margaret Whitmore and nobody else.”
“How did you get to Bellweather?”
Noah’s eyes filled.
He blinked hard.
“Dad drove. Mom stayed.”
“Why?”
“She said somebody had to go back for the computer.”
Richard spoke sharply.
“What computer?”
Noah recoiled.
Margaret turned.
“If you frighten him again, Richard, I will have Helen put you in the corridor with Mercer.”
Helen’s eyebrows rose a fraction.
Richard sat back.
Noah kept going.
“We were almost at the station and the black car came behind us. Dad told me to get Ellie’s coat zipped. Then he drove really fast.”
Margaret pictured Daniel injured, two children in the back seat, snow on the mountain road.
Anger flared in a new direction.
“At Bellweather, Dad stopped behind a building. He told us to run to the platform. He said he would come after us in one minute.”
“One minute?”
Noah nodded.
“He said if he didn’t, we had to get on the Christmas train.”
Margaret looked at Richard.
The Whitmore family chartered the rear observation car every year for a private Christmas trip from Salt Lake City to Denver, a tradition that had become emptier after Daniel’s death. Richard’s office arranged the itinerary months in advance.
Daniel had known exactly where they would be.
“He knew our schedule,” she said.
Richard’s silence told her who had made that possible.
“You told him.”
“No.”
“Then how?”
Richard rubbed his thumb along the edge of his wedding band.
“He has had access to certain information through people who used to work for us.”
Mercer had said Daniel made a serious mistake.
Not had made.
Made.
Present tense.
Margaret returned to Noah.
“Did you see your father after you reached the platform?”
“No.”
“Did you see the black SUV?”
He nodded.
“It stopped near the road. Mr. Mercer got out.”
Helen looked toward the locked door.
Richard stood.
Margaret said, “Sit down.”
“I need to speak to Martin.”
“No.”
“This is no longer about our marriage.”
“You’re right. It’s about a man who chased my injured son to a mountain station and then boarded my train to take his children.”
“Margaret, you do not know that.”
“Noah knows it.”
“He is seven.”
Noah looked at Richard with quiet contempt.
Margaret said, “Seven-year-olds can recognize men.”
May you like
Richard’s nostrils flared.
“Daniel took material that does not belong to him.”
