Chương 3
“I don’t think you’re morally inferior.”
“You think you’re better than us.”
“No. I think I have fewer rooms to hide things in.”
Vanessa made a sound under her breath.
Eric let go of the chair. “You know what? Keep your money.”
“That is what I’m doing.”
His face went red, then drained again. He folded the termination form once, hard, directly through Claire’s signature.
She held out her hand.
“It belongs to me,” she said.
He stared at the hand, then gave her the paper.
Vanessa walked to the door. Eric followed, pausing long enough to look at the bracelet one more time.
“Mom left that to the family,” he said.
“She left it to me.”
“She expected you to share it.”
“She expected you not to sell it.”
He flinched as if she had raised her voice.
Then he left.
Claire locked the door behind them.
She stood with her hand on the deadbolt until the elevator bell sounded down the hall. Only then did she notice that one of the bracelet halves had left a gray streak across the termination form.
She tried to rub it away with her thumb.
The mark spread.
Sophie sat on the concrete stairs between the eighth and ninth floors with her phone beside her and both hands clasped between her knees.
She had meant to leave the building. Instead, she had pushed through the stairwell door when she heard the elevator arrive, then stayed there while her parents descended without her.
Her mother texted first.
Where are you?
Then her father.
Come down now.
Then her mother again.
Do not go back in there.
Sophie read the messages without answering. Through the stairwell wall came the dull machinery of the elevator returning upward, carrying someone who hummed off-key for two floors.
She had been told the sponsorship was an achievement.
Not exactly a scholarship, her father had explained, because wealthy donors liked different words for the same thing. But it had been awarded because Calloway believed in her. The academy’s development director had shaken her hand. Her mother had bought her a new dress for the donor recital. Her father had made a joke about Sophie being the only artist in the family who might earn back what her education cost.
Claire had stood near the rear wall that night in a plain black dress, leaving before the champagne was poured.
Sophie had noticed her aunt but assumed she had come because family members were allowed.
Now she thought of all the times Claire had asked what piece she was working on and Sophie had answered without looking up from her phone.
The stairwell door opened above her.
Claire stepped through carrying Sophie’s coat.
Neither of them spoke at first.
Claire descended one step and held it out.
“You forgot this.”
Sophie took the coat but did not put it on.
“Did they leave?” Claire asked.
Sophie nodded.
“Do they know you’re here?”
Another nod.
Claire leaned against the railing. Her beige coat was still buttoned over the floral dress, as if she had never entirely settled into her own apartment that evening.
“Your father will come back.”
“He won’t.”
“He will.”
“He thinks I’m with Mom.”
“And your mother?”
“Thinks I’m with him.”
Claire considered that. “Efficient.”
Sophie almost smiled. It vanished before it formed.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“About the sponsorship?”
“Yes.”
“I thought anonymity would protect you.”
“From what?”
“Obligation.”
Sophie looked down at the coat in her lap. “It doesn’t feel like protection.”
“No.”
“You sat there while I talked about earning it.”
“I should have corrected that.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Claire listened to the faint city traffic and the buzzing fluorescent tube above the landing.
“Because I liked hearing you sound proud,” she said.
“That’s not a good reason.”
“No.”
“And because you liked knowing something we didn’t.”
Claire looked at her.
Sophie’s expression was rawer than it had been in the apartment. She was frightened, embarrassed, and trying to turn both feelings into anger because anger gave her somewhere to stand.
“Yes,” Claire said. “Partly.”
Sophie looked away first.
The stairwell door opened on the seventh floor. A man in hospital scrubs came through carrying a paper grocery bag. He glanced at them, said, “Evening,” and continued down. The bag smelled faintly of rotisserie chicken.
When he was gone, Sophie said, “Mom didn’t pawn it.”
“She tried.”
“She brought it back.”
“After getting a loan offer.”
“She didn’t take the money.”
Claire waited.
Sophie picked at a loose thread inside her coat sleeve.
“What happened to the bracelet?” Claire asked.
“It broke.”
“I know.”
“It was an accident.”
“I know that’s the sentence everyone selected.”
Sophie’s mouth tightened.
Claire did not press. She had spent most of her adult life pressing numbers until they confessed what people would not. Bank statements, payroll records, expense reports, tax returns. Numbers resisted less dramatically than families, but they lied in cleaner ways.
“I’m going back inside,” Claire said. “You can come in, call your father, or take the elevator down. I won’t stop you.”
“You canceled my school.”
“I stopped paying for it.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It may become the same thing.”
Sophie stood abruptly. “You say things like that so you don’t have to feel bad.”
Claire absorbed the hit because it was close enough to the truth to deserve space.
Sophie pushed through the stairwell door.
Claire followed her into the hallway and watched her press the elevator button.
“Did you tell the school why?” Sophie asked.
“No.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
The elevator arrived.
Sophie stepped inside, then turned.
May you like
“Do you hate my mom?”
Claire thought of Vanessa’s hand in the bracelet case. Vanessa’s fingerprints were still visible in the gray polishing residue. She thought of Vanessa at twenty-six, newly engaged to Eric, washing wineglasses in Claire’s first apartment because she could not stand sitting still while other people cleaned. She thought of Vanessa five years later, holding a newborn Sophie and crying because the baby would not nurse.
