Chương 4
The accident had happened on a thirty-two-foot tender owned by the Mercer family trust.
She had been returning from a dinner on Block Island with two other people when the side gate near the aft boarding platform came open during a sharp turn. Claire had been standing because Emma, then four, had dropped a stuffed rabbit near the bench.
The gate had swung.
Claire had gone through it.
One second of water.
A flash of white hull.
Then machinery.
She never remembered pain from the propeller.
Only pressure.
Only a terrible awareness that one part of her body was no longer moving with the rest.
A deckhand named Owen Pike had entered the water before the tender fully stopped and kept her from drowning.
The Coast Guard investigation had concluded that the gate latch might not have been fully secured.
Human error.
No criminal act.
Mercer Marine had replaced the latches on three company vessels.
Claire had spent five months learning how to walk again.
“What invoice?” she asked.
“A latch assembly.”
Her mouth went dry.
“Before the accident?”
“Four days before.”
“Replaced?”
“Billed as replaced.”
“Was it?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire stared at the prosthetic.
“Who signed it?”
“An operations manager.”
“You said Grant’s office approved it.”
“After the operations manager rejected the work order as unnecessary.”
“Who changed it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You own the company.”
“I own control. That does not mean I personally know who clicks every approval in a maintenance system.”
“You knew enough to move your trust.”
“Yes.”
“And not enough to warn me.”
Thomas said nothing.
Claire could hear his breathing.
For years, Thomas Mercer had been a man who made silence feel deliberate.
Now it sounded old.
“Is that why you gave me the company?” she asked.
“I didn’t give you the company.”
“You told Grant I owned everything.”
“I transferred controlling beneficial interests and amended the voting structure. Lawyers will explain the pieces tomorrow.”
“Then why say it like that?”
“Because my son was about to put his hand on you.”
“That doesn’t make your sentence true.”
“It made him stop.”
Claire closed her eyes.
There was the family talent.
Power first.
Precision later.
“Don’t make decisions for me again.”
“Understood.”
“No, you don’t understand. Everybody keeps doing things because they’re helping me. Grant answered questions when I was medicated. You dealt with insurance. The doctors talked to whichever man was standing closest. I wake up and things are signed.”
“I remember.”
“I do too.”
Thomas spoke carefully. “What do you want me to do?”
It was such a simple question that Claire did not know how to answer it.
Nobody had asked it at the hospital.
Not exactly.
She looked through the open bathroom door at Emma sleeping sideways across the bed.
“I want you to send everything you found to Detective Keene.”
“All of it?”
Claire nearly laughed again.
“Yes, Thomas. That’s generally what all of it means.”
“Some of it concerns the company.”
“I assumed.”
“There are employees who had nothing to do with this.”
“Then protecting them starts with knowing what happened.”
“You sound like you did when you worked claims.”
“I still work.”
“You’re on leave.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“Fair.”
Claire rubbed the edge of the blister with one finger.
“Send it.”
“I will.”
“And Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“If you changed the trust because you expected me to protect the Mercer name, change it back.”
He was quiet for so long she thought the call had dropped.
Then he said, “I changed it because I no longer trust Grant to protect anyone but himself.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
Claire waited.
“I won’t change it back tonight,” he said. “Not because I expect anything from you. Because moving it again immediately would create more confusion. Speak to your own lawyer tomorrow. Not mine.”
That answer, irritatingly, made sense.
“All right.”
“Claire.”
“What?”
“I am sorry.”
She looked at Emma.
“For which part?”
Thomas did not answer quickly enough.
Claire ended the call.
At three in the morning, Emma woke and asked for cereal.
The hotel had no cereal in the room.
Claire ordered two bowls from room service, then discovered Emma wanted the kind with marshmallows and the hotel sent granola.
Emma stared at it.
Claire stared at her.
“It’s fancy bird food,” Claire said.
Emma gave a small, guilty laugh.
Claire found crackers in the minibar instead.
They sat against the headboard eating crackers and watching a muted cartoon.
For eleven minutes, nothing happened.
No police called.
No lawyers texted.
No one accused anyone of attempted murder.
Emma complained that the crackers were too salty.
Claire agreed.
At 3:22, Emma asked, “Is Daddy bad?”
Claire turned off the television.
She wished the question had come at noon, after coffee, after legal advice, after somebody gave her a sentence that would not follow her daughter for the rest of her life.
Instead there were crumbs in the sheets and her prosthetic stood beside the minibar like another adult waiting for an answer.
“Your dad did something I don’t understand yet.”
“That means bad.”
“Sometimes.”
Emma’s lower lip moved.
“Does he love me?”
Claire felt anger arrive so quickly that she had to wait before speaking.
Not anger at Emma.
Not even cleanly at Grant.
At the fact that adults could create situations in which a child had to ask whether love survived evidence.
“I believe he loves you.”
“But he gets mad.”
“Yes.”
“Can both happen?”
Claire looked down at the cracker in her hand.
“Yes.”
Emma considered this.
“I don’t like that.”
“Me neither.”
The next morning, Claire hired a lawyer named Rachel Sung because Rachel had represented one of Claire’s former coworkers through an ugly divorce and had a reputation for telling rich people when their money did not make them interesting.
Rachel met Claire at the hotel at nine.
May you like
She wore navy pants, carried no visible designer anything, and arrived with coffee for herself but not for Claire.
“I didn’t know what you drink,” she said.
