Chương 10
Elena looked down the hallway.
“My mother used to say rich people don’t believe lies more easily than anyone else. They simply have assistants who arrange the lies into folders.”
The elevator chimed impatiently.
Adrian put one hand in his pocket.
“I kept a message you sent me,” Elena said.
“What message?”
“The last one.”
He searched his memory.
She recited it without looking at him.
“Do whatever you think is best. I can’t do this right now.”
He remembered sending the words from an airport lounge during the Harrington crisis. Elena had written that she needed to speak to him urgently. He had assumed she wanted another argument about his canceled trip.
“I didn’t know you were pregnant.”
“I know.”
“I meant I couldn’t have that conversation then.”
“I know that too.”
She looked at him.
“But when your father told me you wanted us gone, I already had a sentence from you that sounded close enough.”
The elevator doors began closing.
This time, she let them.
Adrian’s first video call with Sophie lasted eleven minutes.
She showed him a cardboard model of the solar system, though Saturn’s rings had fallen off and Jupiter was painted purple because she had run out of orange.
“Jupiter isn’t purple,” she said.
“It is in your model.”
“That doesn’t make it true.”
“No.”
“Mom says you work with ships.”
“Trucks, ships, airplanes, warehouses.”
“Do you drive the ships?”
“No.”
“What do you do?”
Adrian tried to explain global logistics and stopped after seeing her eyes drift toward the terrier sleeping behind her.
“I sit in meetings,” he said.
“All day?”
“Most days.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It often is.”
She accepted this answer.
Elena remained off camera but close enough that Adrian could hear dishes being washed. Once, Sophie asked whether she could show him her room. Elena said not tonight. Adrian did not challenge her.
Before the call ended, Sophie picked up a drawing.
It showed three stick figures beneath a chandelier. One small figure wore a triangular white dress. One had brown hair. The third knelt on the floor.
Adrian stared.
“That’s the party,” she explained.
“I see.”
“I didn’t draw all the people.”
“Probably a good choice.”
“You were sad.”
“Yes.”
“Are you still sad?”
He considered giving her the easier answer.
“Yes,” he said. “But I’m glad I know you.”
Sophie touched the edge of the paper.
“Mom says glad and sad can happen together.”
“Your mom is right.”
“She usually is.”
Elena turned off the water in the kitchen.
Sophie leaned closer to the screen.
“Will you come next time?”
“To the call?”
“To my science night.”
Adrian looked toward the part of the room where Elena stood unseen.
“When is it?”
“Thursday.”
“I would like to.”
“Mom?”
Elena came into view behind Sophie.
Her hair was tied back, and she wore an old gray sweatshirt Adrian remembered from years before. The sight of it affected him in a way he had not prepared for.
“You can attend,” she said. “No press. No security inside. You arrive separately. You leave if Sophie becomes uncomfortable.”
“I agree.”
“And you do not make a donation to the school.”
He blinked.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
He had been.
“No donation,” he said.
Science night took place in a public-school gymnasium that smelled of floor wax, poster paint, and pizza sold by the parent association. Adrian arrived in a navy sweater and gray trousers after Mara told him a suit would look like an inspection.
He was still overdressed.
Several parents recognized him. Some whispered. One asked for a photograph near the recycling exhibit. Adrian declined.
Sophie stood beside her model wearing safety goggles too large for her face.
“You came,” she said.
“I said I would.”
She looked behind him.
“Where are the men?”
“Outside.”
“Mom said no security.”
“They are across the street.”
Sophie considered whether this violated the agreement.
“Across the street is not inside.”
“That was my reasoning.”
Elena approached carrying three paper cups of lemonade.
“You negotiated with a six-year-old,” she said.
“She asked a precise question.”
“That is how it starts.”
For the next hour, Adrian helped Sophie reattach Saturn’s ring with tape. He listened to a boy explain a baking-soda volcano in excruciating detail. He bought a slice of pizza and burned the roof of his mouth because he did not wait for it to cool.
Sophie laughed.
It was the first time he heard her laugh without hesitation.
The sound made him look away.
Elena noticed but said nothing.
Near the end of the evening, a woman approached them with her phone raised. Elena stiffened.
“I just wanted to say I saw the video,” the woman said. “My father left too. Men like you think tears fix everything.”
Sophie looked up at Adrian.
He felt every parent within earshot become still.
The old instinct rose first: assess, control, end the interaction.
He swallowed it.
“You’re right that tears don’t fix anything,” he said. “I’m sorry about your father.”
The woman appeared disappointed that he had not fought.
She lowered the phone and walked away.
Elena watched her go.
“You didn’t have to apologize for someone else,” she said.
“I wasn’t.”
Sophie pulled at his sleeve.
“Saturn fell again.”
He crouched beside the table.
“Then we use more tape.”
It became harder after that.
Not because Sophie rejected him, but because she began expecting him.
She called on Tuesdays and Saturdays. She asked whether he would attend her dance recital, then quit dance two weeks later because she hated the tights. She wanted him to read the same book about a runaway rabbit three times. She became angry when he missed a call after a board hearing ran late.
“You said seven,” she told him the next evening.
“I know.”
“I waited.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Mom said work happened.”
“It did.”
May you like
“That’s what she says when she doesn’t want me to be mad.”
Elena sat beside her, watching Adrian through the screen.
