Chương 13
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“It’s a cave.”
“There are chairs.”
“Caves can have chairs.”
She sat on the floor beside him.
He was drawing an octopus holding eight different objects: a key, a shoe, a slice of cake, a car, a book, a spoon, a fish, and what appeared to be a human ear.
“What’s that?”
“A shell.”
“Right.”
He colored one tentacle purple.
“Do you want Grandpa to go to jail?” Claire asked.
The question escaped before she could decide whether she should ask it.
Oliver stopped coloring.
She immediately regretted it. “You don’t have to answer.”
“Is he going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can he get out?”
“Sometimes people leave jail after a certain amount of time.”
“Then why go?”
Claire looked at the underside of the kitchen table. There were pencil marks from when he had been four and believed every flat surface required weather.
“Consequences,” she said. “And to keep people safe.”
“Is Grandma safe?”
“I think so.”
“Aunt Natalie?”
“I think so.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
He resumed coloring. “Then he should learn not to do it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. You’re the grown-up.”
Claire leaned her head against a chair leg.
Oliver changed pencils. “I don’t want to see him.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Ever?”
The word carried more time than a seven-year-old could measure.
“You won’t have to unless you decide you want to and it is safe.”
“What if Grandma wants me to?”
“She doesn’t get to decide.”
“What if you want me to?”
“I don’t get to decide alone either.”
He nodded.
After a minute, he asked, “Can people stop being grandpas?”
Claire looked at the octopus holding the key.
“They can stop doing the job,” she said.
Richard’s first public interview aired three months after the wedding.
He had not been advised to give it. According to Uncle Peter, the foundation’s communications team had strongly opposed the idea. Richard arranged it through an old friend at a financial news program, believing a controlled conversation would correct the image of him created by the arrest photograph.
Claire watched from her living room after Oliver went to bed.
Richard wore a dark-blue suit and no tie. The setting was a private office with warm shelves and carefully blurred family photographs behind him.
He admitted that he had resumed drinking during a period of personal stress. He described the cellar incident as a tragic escalation between an impaired adult and a frightened child. He said he had reached for Oliver to prevent him from running near breakable glass. He acknowledged closing the door but denied deliberately injuring or threatening him.
“I failed my grandson,” he said. “But I am not the monster some have portrayed.”
Claire paused the video.
Ben sat beside her with his arms crossed. “He practiced that line.”
“He thinks the distinction matters.”
“It matters to him.”
“He failed Oliver as if he forgot a birthday.”
Ben took the remote from her hand and resumed the interview.
The host asked whether Richard believed Oliver had lied.
Richard hesitated.
It was a small pause, but Claire knew him well enough to see the calculation.
“I believe Oliver described the experience as he understood it,” he said.
Claire stood and walked into the kitchen.
Ben followed. “Don’t call him.”
“I’m not.”
“You picked up your phone.”
“I’m calling Natalie.”
Natalie answered immediately.
“I saw,” she said.
“He called Oliver confused on national television.”
“He used softer words.”
“He said the same thing.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
Natalie was quiet. “The foundation board meets Friday.”
“You’re still on the board.”
“Yes.”
“Vote him out.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
Claire laughed. “It’s exactly that simple.”
“No. Removing the founder requires a supermajority. Peter is worried donors will leave if Dad is forced out publicly.”
“Donors are already leaving.”
“Some are. Others think the board should wait for the case.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think he should resign.”
“Then make him.”
“I don’t control seven other people.”
“You control your vote.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Claire gripped the edge of the counter. “Why?”
“Because you don’t work there. Your health insurance doesn’t come from the foundation. Your husband’s architecture firm doesn’t depend on three Morgan-funded projects.”
There it was.
Daniel had returned home after two weeks. He and Natalie were attending counseling. Claire had tried not to judge the decision, which mostly meant she judged it silently.
“So Daniel wants you to protect Dad,” she said.
“Daniel wants me to consider the consequences.”
“Dad’s favorite phrase.”
“Do not make my marriage into a copy of Mom’s.”
“Then stop copying her choices.”
Natalie hung up.
Claire stared at the phone.
Ben leaned against the refrigerator. “That went well.”
“She wants to vote him out but also wants no one to lose anything.”
“So do you.”
“I don’t.”
“You offered to support the estate manager.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Claire opened her mouth and closed it.
Ben took two glasses from the cabinet. “Everyone wants courage to be free when they’re the one asking for it.”
“I called the police on my father.”
“Yes.”
“I lost half my family.”
“Yes.”
“He changed his will.”
“Yes.”
Claire looked at him. Richard’s attorney had notified her that she and Oliver had been removed from all estate plans. Claire had told herself it meant nothing. She had never counted on the money. Still, the deliberate exclusion felt like being disowned in a language Richard trusted.
Ben filled the glasses. “You paid a price,” he said. “That doesn’t mean Natalie owes the exact same price on your schedule.”
“He is using her job to control her.”
“Probably.”
“So I should be patient?”
“You should be honest without pretending honesty makes her mortgage disappear.”
Claire took the water he offered.
“I hate when you become reasonable,” she said.
May you like
“It’s exhausting for both of us.”
Friday morning, Natalie entered the foundation meeting with a folder containing copies of Richard’s public interview, the board’s ethics policy, and a resignation letter.
