Chương 5
She thought about Elena taking the paper from her backpack and saying, You can leave some things empty.
She thought about twelve, asking whether her father would have liked her.
Elena had taken too long to answer.
Probably too much, she had said.
At the time Maya thought it was a joke.
Now every pause in her childhood had changed shape.
At one-thirty, Adrian Vale knocked on her door.
She knew it was him before she opened it because he had texted first.
This is Adrian. Claire gave Daniel my number, Daniel gave me yours after your lawyer said you were willing to receive one message. I am downstairs. I brought nothing dramatic. Mostly coffee.
Maya did not have a lawyer.
Daniel had apparently decided that Janelle’s cousin, who had called him once and identified herself as an attorney, counted.
Maya opened the door.
Adrian held up two paper cups.
“I guessed black.”
“Why?”
“You look like someone who judges syrup.”
“That’s insulting.”
“I can go buy syrup.”
She took the coffee.
He glanced at her cheek.
The bruise had faded to yellow at the edge.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t hit me.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t apologize for her.”
He nodded.
“Okay.”
She let him inside.
Adrian stood awkwardly near the couch.
Maya pointed.
“You can sit.”
“Thanks.”
He sat.
She remained standing.
He looked around the apartment without pretending not to.
Books stacked beside the television. Framed exhibition postcards. A dying fern near the window.
His gaze stopped on the cardboard box from her mother.
He looked away immediately.
Maya sat opposite him.
“Did you get the result?”
“Dad told me.”
“How much did he tell you?”
“Just that it confirmed.”
“You believe him?”
“I believe the lab.”
“Good answer.”
He took a sip of coffee.
Maya waited.
Adrian looked uncomfortable.
That reassured her.
Someone who had arrived with a speech would have been easier to hate.
He said, “I was told my whole life that my father had one child.”
Maya looked at him.
“You.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And that was apparently not true.”
“That’s not exactly about me.”
“No.”
He rubbed his jaw.
“My mother died when I was seventeen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Was Victoria your mother?”
A strange expression crossed his face.
“No.”
Maya felt stupid.
“She married Dad when I was fourteen.”
“Oh.”
“She and I are not particularly close.”
“That’s one way to describe the auction.”
Adrian gave a short laugh.
Then he looked guilty for laughing.
Maya noticed.
“She knew,” he said.
“Apparently.”
“I asked her how.”
“What did she say?”
“That she had seen the pendant in a photograph years ago.”
“Where?”
“She won’t say.”
“Richard’s lawyer told me the same thing.”
“Dad has people going through archived family records.”
Maya stiffened.
“Looking for my mother?”
“Looking for any reference to Elena Reyes.”
“Your family has files on people?”
Adrian gave her a look.
“Have you met my family?”
“Unfortunately.”
He nodded.
“That’s fair.”
Maya stared at the coffee lid.
“Why did your father believe I died?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You came here without knowing.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Adrian looked at her.
“Because I thought you should know one thing before everyone starts telling you what kind of man he is.”
Maya waited.
“He can be selfish.”
She blinked.
“That’s your helpful information?”
“He can also be generous in ways that make people forgive the selfish parts too quickly. He has spent a lot of his life assuming that if he solves the practical problem, the emotional problem should follow.”
Maya leaned back.
Adrian continued.
“He does not like being lied to. He likes even less discovering that he made it easy for someone to lie to him.”
“You sound angry.”
“I am.”
“At him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Adrian looked toward the window.
“Because I remember the name Elena.”
Maya stopped moving.
“What?”
“I didn’t remember it at the auction. I remembered the next morning.”
“From where?”
“My grandfather.”
Richard’s father.
Maya put down her coffee.
“When?”
“I was maybe nine.”
“Adrian.”
“I know.”
“What did he say?”
“He was arguing with Dad in the study. I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“I don’t know. I only heard part of it.”
“What part?”
Adrian closed his eyes for a second.
“My grandfather said, ‘You let Elena make a fool of you once. I won’t watch another woman do it.’”
Maya stared at him.
“Another woman?”
“My dad was engaged to someone at the time. It fell apart a few months later.”
“Did you tell Richard you remember this?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He went completely quiet.”
Maya stood.
Adrian watched her.
She walked to the table and picked up the broken pendant.
A jeweler had told her the clasp could be repaired, but she had not let him take it apart.
Inside the shallow oval compartment, beneath where the photograph had been folded, she had found something else.
A tiny scrap of paper.
Three handwritten characters.
E.V.
She had assumed they were initials.
Now she looked at Adrian.
“What was your grandfather’s name?”
“Charles.”
“Your grandmother?”
“Eleanor.”
Maya held out the pendant.
Adrian did not touch it.
“What?”
“There are initials inside.”
He leaned closer.
His face changed.
“E.V.”
“You recognize them?”
“My grandmother signed everything that way.”
Maya swallowed.
Adrian looked up.
“That pendant belonged to her.”
“That’s what Victoria meant.”
“Maybe.”
“She said my mother stole it from a dead woman.”
Adrian’s mouth tightened.
“My grandmother died nine years ago.”
“My mother had this long before that.”
“How long?”
“As long as I can remember.”
Adrian looked at the pendant again.
“If Grandma gave it to Elena—”
“Then Victoria lied.”
“Or she believed it was stolen.”
“Why would she know it existed?”
Neither had an answer.
That afternoon, Maya went to the storage unit.
May you like
Janelle insisted on coming.
The facility sat behind a tire shop in Glendale, the kind of place Maya had driven to so many times since Elena’s death that she no longer noticed the mural of cartoon moving boxes painted beside the entrance.
