Chương 4
“What did he say?” Melissa asked.
“That the payment was real.”
Melissa stopped reading.
“Oh.”
“But not for this.”
“Oh.”
“He says my father was harassing me.”
Melissa’s expression closed.
“Well.”
Claire looked up.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What does ‘well’ mean?”
“It means Daniel was harassing you.”
“I know that.”
“And then he stopped.”
“Yes.”
Melissa sat back.
Claire stared at her.
“No.”
“I didn’t know Adrian paid him.”
“But you knew something.”
“I knew Daniel didn’t suddenly become emotionally healthy.”
“What did you know?”
Melissa scratched at a coffee stain on the island with her thumbnail.
“About six months after that Kessler thing, Daniel called my mom.”
“Aunt Jean?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That someone was trying to intimidate him.”
Claire felt the kitchen become very quiet.
“Someone?”
“He wouldn’t say who.”
“And you never told me?”
“You had finally stopped checking your phone every time it buzzed.”
Claire laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Apparently everybody agreed I shouldn’t be informed about my own life.”
“That’s fair.”
“Do not tell me I’m being fair.”
“I said your criticism is fair.”
“That’s worse.”
Melissa drank coffee.
Claire pushed away from the island.
The chair legs scraped the floor.
“I need ten minutes where nobody explains that they lied to protect me.”
Melissa lowered her eyes.
Claire walked to the living room.
Outside, the photographers had multiplied.
She stood behind the edge of the curtain and watched a woman across the street take a small brown dog in a red sweater around a construction barrier. The dog refused to walk over a metal grate. The woman pulled. The dog sat.
For thirty seconds they had a silent argument.
Claire watched because it required nothing from her.
Eventually the woman picked up the dog.
Her phone buzzed.
The name on the screen made Claire’s stomach drop.
DANIEL.
She had not deleted the contact.
She had only blocked the number.
This call came from somewhere else.
She let it ring.
Melissa appeared in the doorway.
“Who?”
Claire showed her.
The call stopped.
A voicemail notification appeared almost immediately.
Melissa said, “Don’t listen to it alone.”
“I’m not alone.”
“I meant without a lawyer.”
Claire almost asked when her cousin had become a person who said things like that.
Then she remembered Melissa had spent eight years doing crisis communications for politicians and pharmaceutical executives before quitting to open a stationery store in Brooklyn because, in her words, paper had never asked her to spin a felony.
Claire put the phone on the coffee table.
“He sent the envelope.”
“You don’t know that.”
Claire held up the ivory paper.
Melissa stared at it.
“What?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
Melissa stepped closer.
“That color.”
“It’s an envelope.”
“Daniel used these.”
Claire looked again.
The paper was heavy, almost cream, with a faint woven texture.
Her father had written letters when other people sent texts.
Thank-you notes.
Apologies.
Demands.
After Claire’s mother died, Daniel had mailed her a three-page letter because she refused to answer the phone. It began, I am not going to dignify your accusations with an argument, and then argued for three pages.
Always ivory.
Always heavy stock.
“That proves nothing,” Claire said.
“No.”
Melissa touched her own mug.
“But it’s not nothing either.”
At nine, Claire called the law firm Adrian had named.
She did not call the partner.
She called the main number from the firm’s public website and asked to be connected, because every lesson of the morning had made her suspicious of convenience.
The partner was named Samuel Greene.
He sounded seventy and irritated to be awake, though it was after nine.
“Ms. Mercer, I wondered whether I would hear from you.”
“That makes one of us.”
“Yes. Mr. Vale called at six fifty-two.”
Claire’s hand tightened around the phone.
“He said he wouldn’t contact anyone.”
“He did not contact me after telling you that, if that is your concern. His call came earlier.”
She hated that Adrian had anticipated the suspicion.
“I want the original agreement.”
“I expected you would.”
“Today.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Not through Adrian.”
“I represent Mr. Vale in certain personal matters, but the document is held in our archive. You are entitled to review a copy only with authorization from one of the parties.”
“I’m not a party?”
A pause.
“No.”
The answer hurt in a way she had not expected.
The document had shaped years of her life.
Her name was apparently not enough to make it hers.
“Has Adrian authorized you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Six fifty-four.”
Two minutes after the call began.
Claire sat at the kitchen island.
“What exactly did he authorize?”
“Release of a certified copy to you and to counsel of your choosing.”
“Why?”
“I imagine because he understands this looks terrible.”
Claire blinked.
Samuel Greene sighed.
“I’m old enough to have stopped pretending obvious things are complicated.”
Despite herself, she liked him a little.
“Did you draft the agreement?”
“Yes.”
“Did my father sign it?”
“Yes.”
“Did Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“Did Adrian pay him three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Did the agreement mention facilitating access to me?”
“No.”
“Did it mention Adrian having a relationship with me?”
“No.”
“Did Adrian know me at the time?”
Samuel paused.
“That is not a question the document answers.”
“You were there.”
“I was.”
“So?”
“So I am trying not to become a witness in a matter where I may still be counsel.”
Claire looked at Melissa, who was pretending not to listen while very clearly listening.
“Did he discuss dating me?”
“No.”
“Did my father?”
A longer pause.
“Yes.”
Claire’s fingers went numb.
“What did he say?”
“I think you need your own lawyer before we continue.”
“Mr. Greene—”
“Ms. Mercer, that is not evasion. It is advice.”
She looked at the forged contract.
“Fine.”
Melissa pointed at herself.
Claire shook her head.
May you like
Melissa pointed toward her phone and silently mouthed, Nora.
Claire knew Nora Feldman through the museum board. She was a litigator who wore bright sneakers with dark suits and had once told a donor, in public, that the phrase “just between us” was not a legal privilege.
