Chương 8
Sophie sat on a plastic chair swinging her feet.
“Will it hurt?” she asked again.
“No,” Adrian said.
“You said usually before.”
“I was wrong to say usually.”
Rosa looked at him over the top of her glasses.
“So you can learn.”
Elena gave her mother a warning look.
“What?” Rosa said. “It’s useful information.”
Adrian almost smiled.
Rosa did not.
She had the strong, tired face of someone who had spent years moving heavy trays and distrusting people who offered help too elegantly. When the nurse called Sophie’s name, Rosa stood.
“Only one parent,” the nurse said.
The word created an awkward silence.
Elena went with Sophie.
Adrian remained in the waiting room with Rosa.
A television mounted near the ceiling played a morning program without sound. Adrian’s own face appeared beneath the caption BILLIONAIRE’S SECRET CHILD?
Rosa looked up at it.
“They chose a bad picture.”
Adrian glanced at her.
“Your head looks too big.”
He looked back at the screen.
“It does.”
Rosa adjusted the canvas bag on her lap.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
Then she said, “I wrote to you.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now. That is different.”
He nodded.
“I wrote because Elena was falling apart and pretending she wasn’t. She had stopped eating. She was working weddings while pregnant because people kept canceling when they found out. She would come home smelling like champagne she couldn’t drink.”
Adrian watched a commercial replace his face.
“I should have found her.”
“Yes.”
“I was told she terminated the pregnancy.”
Rosa’s hands tightened around the bag straps.
“And you did what?”
“I called her number. It was disconnected. I went to her old apartment. Someone else lived there. My father told me she moved to California and wanted no contact.”
“Then?”
Adrian looked down.
“I stopped.”
Rosa’s expression held no triumph.
“That is the part you have to live with.”
“I know.”
“Do not say you know as if knowing is payment.”
He met her eyes.
“All right.”
She looked away first.
“My daughter loved you,” Rosa said. “I hated that. You were polite in the way rich men are polite when they know no one can make them stay. But she loved you.”
“I loved her.”
“You left her waiting outside a restaurant for two hours.”
Adrian remembered.
“A board meeting ran late.”
“You had a phone.”
“I sent a message.”
“You sent, Can’t make it.”
He rubbed his hands together.
Rosa continued.
“You canceled birthdays. You disappeared when your father called. You asked her to understand your responsibilities, but you never asked what understanding cost her.”
“That’s true.”
“She did not believe your father at first. That is why she kept writing. But your silence started doing his work for him.”
The clinic door opened.
Sophie came out holding a sticker shaped like a star.
“It didn’t hurt,” she announced.
“I stand corrected,” Adrian said.
She walked toward him and held out a second sticker.
“This one is for you.”
He took it.
It was a cartoon lion with the words BRAVE PATIENT printed beneath its feet.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You have to get swabbed too.”
He placed the sticker on the lapel of his suit.
Elena watched him but said nothing.
The technician swabbed his cheek. The entire procedure took less than a minute.
When they stepped outside, reporters shouted from behind the barricade erected across the sidewalk.
“Adrian, is she your daughter?”
“Elena, did the Vale family pay you?”
“Are you seeking custody?”
“Did you know he was married?”
Sophie froze.
Adrian moved instinctively, then stopped before touching her. Elena lifted Sophie into her arms.
“Car,” she said.
The security officer opened the rear door.
A photographer leaned over the barricade and called, “Sophie, look here!”
Adrian turned.
The force in his expression silenced several people.
“Do not speak to her.”
The photographer lowered his camera for half a second, then raised it again.
Adrian stepped between the lens and Sophie until the car pulled away.
By afternoon, the image of the lion sticker on his lapel had become another headline.
PR consultants praised its emotional authenticity.
Adrian removed it and placed it inside his wallet.
The test results would take five business days because Elena refused an expedited private process that might compromise chain of custody. Adrian agreed, though each hour felt unreasonable.
During those five days, the life he had built began to come apart in practical ways.
The board appointed an interim chief executive.
Federal regulators asked whether Vale Meridian records had been improperly destroyed.
The family foundation’s largest partner suspended its annual grant pending review.
Julia moved into her sister’s apartment and declined every request to meet.
Margaret resigned from three charitable boards after video surfaced of her leaving the ballroom while reporters asked whether she had hidden a child.
Martin Kline issued a statement denying coercion and describing Adrian as a distressed son misinterpreting incomplete family records.
Then he filed for an injunction preventing Mara from releasing documents from the estate archive.
Mara responded by hiring her own lawyer and announcing she would cooperate with any lawful investigation.
For the first time in their adult lives, Adrian and his sister ate takeout noodles at her kitchen counter.
Mara’s apartment contained books she had actually read, plants she forgot to water, and a refrigerator crowded with magnets from places she had visited alone.
Adrian opened a carton and stared at the noodles.
“Why didn’t you tell me before the gala?”
“I tried to.”
“Not hard enough.”
Mara pushed a bottle of hot sauce toward him.
“You had seventeen unread letters and you’re blaming me for three missed calls?”
He looked at her.
“That was cruel,” she said. “Accurate, but cruel.”
He poured too much hot sauce into the carton.
Mara watched him eat one bite and regret it.
“You always do that.”
“What?”
“Use too much when you’re angry.”
May you like
“I don’t.”
“You put half a bottle of Tabasco in soup after Father removed you from the Singapore deal.”
