Chương 2
“I have been staying here for five weeks. I cannot pack in nine minutes.”
“Take your purse and your medication. I’ll have the rest delivered.”
“To where?”
“I don’t care.”
Evelyn stared at him. A muscle shifted near her left eye. “You will care when you have slept.”
“No.”
“When the Singapore lenders call in two hours, you will care. When the board asks why you abandoned the most important negotiation in the company’s history, you will care. When you understand what she has done—”
“Seven minutes.”
Claire lowered her head. A strand of hair fell across her face. Adrian reached to move it and stopped before touching her.
Evelyn saw the hesitation.
“You always do this,” she said to him. “You walk into a situation late, decide you are the only moral person in the room, and make a decision everyone else has to pay for.”
Adrian did not answer.
His mother placed one hand on the back of the armchair. For the first time since he had entered, she looked less like the elegant chairwoman of Vale Hospitality and more like a sixty-two-year-old woman standing barefoot on a wet rug.
“She was not injured,” Evelyn said. “She called me cruel. She said I treated everyone in this family like staff. I told her that if she believed caring for another person was beneath her, perhaps she should experience what service actually meant. She chose to kneel.”
Claire made a small sound that might have been disbelief.
Evelyn looked at her. “You did.”
“You locked the bedroom door.”
Adrian turned toward Claire.
Her shoulders folded inward.
Evelyn’s expression barely changed, but she gripped the chair more tightly. “So you would stay and finish the conversation.”
“You took my phone.”
“You were trying to call Adrian during a live negotiation.”
“I was trying to tell my husband what was happening in his house.”
“You were trying to destroy a transaction that supports eight hundred employees because you were angry about a document you did not understand.”
Adrian looked at Claire. “What document?”
She did not answer.
Evelyn picked up her shoes. “There. That is the part she left out.”
Adrian stepped between them.
“Five minutes.”
His mother slipped her feet into the shoes without sitting down. It was a small act of defiance, balancing flawlessly while the marble beneath her was wet.
“You think protecting someone means believing the first version you hear,” she said. “It does not. Sometimes protection means preventing a frightened person from making a permanent mistake.”
“Four.”
Evelyn’s eyes hardened. “Your father used to count when he had nothing intelligent left to say.”
Adrian’s face went blank.
Claire drew in a sudden breath and bent forward.
This time the pain lasted longer.
Adrian turned away from his mother as though she had ceased to exist. He knelt and placed his hand near Claire’s shoulder, waiting until she nodded before touching her.
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Not much.”
She gave him a look that, in another life, would have been irritated. Her mouth trembled at one corner.
The contraction—or cramp, or whatever they were still calling it—released slowly. Claire leaned back against the window bench, exhausted by the effort of remaining composed.
Adrian removed his jacket and placed it around her shoulders.
“I’m calling the doctor now.”
She did not object.
By the time he finished explaining the symptoms to the nurse at the obstetric practice, Evelyn had left the bedroom. He heard drawers closing in the guest suite across the hall. No slamming. His mother had never slammed doors. Slamming admitted a loss of control.
The nurse instructed them to go to labor and delivery for monitoring. Adrian repeated the directions aloud, though he had heard every word. He was already looking for Claire’s shoes.
“They’re in the closet,” Evelyn called from the hallway.
Adrian froze.
Claire looked toward the open door.
Evelyn stood there with a cream leather handbag over one shoulder and a small hard-sided suitcase behind her. She had put on a long white coat. Her lipstick had been reapplied.
“I packed her hospital bag two weeks ago,” she said. “It is in the downstairs coat closet. The blue one, not the gray. The gray bag is missing the charger.”
Adrian’s anger faltered under the practical usefulness of the information. Evelyn noticed. She always noticed.
“Thank you,” Claire said automatically.
Adrian looked at her.
Claire’s face flushed with shame.
Evelyn’s expression softened, though not enough to become an apology. “Call me when the doctor examines you.”
“No,” Adrian said.
His mother’s gaze moved to him. “I was speaking to Claire.”
“No,” Claire said.
The word came out so softly that Evelyn almost pretended not to hear it.
Then Claire raised her eyes.
“Don’t come to the hospital.”
A long silence followed.
Evelyn nodded once. “Very well.”
She extended the handle of her suitcase and walked away. A moment later, its wheels passed over the marble landing and softened on the carpeted stairs.
Adrian found Claire’s flats in the closet. He crouched to put them on her feet, but she took them from him.
“I can do it.”
“Okay.”
She bent forward, failed to reach past her belly, and sat back.
Neither of them spoke.
Adrian placed the shoes gently on her feet.
Downstairs, the front door closed.
Claire began to cry without making a sound.
Adrian sat beside her on the bench. His first impulse was to pull her against him. His second was to demand an explanation. Both impulses felt like forms of taking.
He rested his hands between his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of his travel jacket. “For which part?”
He had no answer ready.
That seemed to answer her.
May you like
The drive to the hospital took twenty-three minutes. Adrian ran one red light after checking twice that the intersection was empty. Claire did not tell him to slow down until he accelerated through a yellow near the county line.
“Please don’t get us killed on the way to making sure we’re not dying.”
