Chương 5
Elena returned the phone. “Then tell the truth before someone invents a better one.”
“We do not know the truth.”
“You know more than you did twenty minutes ago.”
“I know my father lied. That does not establish paternity.”
“You were married to me.”
“That establishes possibility.”
The coldness of the word hurt more than she expected.
Mara watched both of them. “An accredited laboratory can provide preliminary results within days.”
Marcus glanced at the ballroom doors.
The reopening gala had taken fourteen months to plan. Three hundred guests were eating beneath a restored ceiling while a string quartet waited to perform in the gallery. The hotel had been closed for nearly two years. Its reopening was intended to assure lenders, employees, and the board that the Vale Group remained stable after a disastrous expansion in Los Angeles.
Instead, Marcus’s family history was spreading through phones in the dining room.
“The gala continues,” he said.
Elena stared at him. “You cannot return to that ballroom.”
“I am the host.”
“You just discovered your father stole your child.”
“I discovered an allegation.”
Mara gave him a weary look. “Silas would be proud of that sentence.”
Marcus walked to the door.
Elena stepped in front of him.
For a moment, the distance between them resembled the staircase again, except she was no longer below him.
“Where are you going?”
“To prevent three hundred people from deciding that Adrian Rowan came here to demand money.”
“Did he ask for money?”
“No.”
“Did he ask for your name?”
“No.”
“Did he ask for anything?”
Marcus looked past her toward the corridor.
“He asked why his mother’s name was on a card.”
The answer stopped him.
Elena waited.
Marcus’s shoulders lowered a fraction.
Then the ballroom doors opened and his communications director hurried toward them, holding two phones and wearing the fixed smile of a person trained to appear calm during disasters.
“Marcus,” she said, “we need five minutes.”
He left with her.
Elena did not try to stop him again.
Adrian’s ride-share driver canceled while he stood beneath the hotel canopy.
The second driver stopped on the opposite side of the avenue and called to complain that Adrian’s location pin was wrong. Adrian walked through the rain, crossed between two idling cars, and climbed into a sedan that smelled of vanilla air freshener and wet dog.
The driver looked at him in the mirror.
“Big party?”
“Apparently.”
“You famous?”
“No.”
The driver held up his phone. The video from the hotel steps was paused on the screen.
“That’s you in the background, right?”
Adrian looked at the dark outline beside the elevator lobby.
“No.”
“Looks like you.”
“It’s a man in a black suit.”
“Yeah. Like you.”
Adrian fastened his seat belt. “Can we go?”
The driver shrugged and merged into traffic.
Adrian’s apartment was in Jersey City, above a bakery that began work at three in the morning and filled his bedroom with the smell of yeast before sunrise. He had lived there for six years because the landlord fixed things when asked and because the view of Manhattan was mostly blocked by a brick warehouse, lowering the rent.
He entered without turning on the overhead light.
A sympathy card still stood on the kitchen counter between a jar of coffee and a roll of electrical tape. It had arrived after his adoptive father’s funeral and remained unopened because the handwriting belonged to a cousin who always wrote more than the occasion required.
Adrian removed the wet jacket and hung it over a chair.
His phone showed fourteen missed calls.
Eight were from his business partner, Luis.
Two were from unknown numbers.
One was from the Vale Hotel.
Three were from Ruth Rowan, the woman he had called Mom for thirty-two years.
He called her first.
She answered before the first ring finished.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Are reporters there?”
He looked toward the dark window. “Why would reporters be here?”
“Because a woman on television said you might be Marcus Vale’s secret son.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
“Television?”
“It was online television. I don’t know what counts anymore.”
“Mom.”
“I told your aunt not to send me links. She sent four.”
He pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat.
Ruth waited.
She had never been good at silence. Usually she filled it by discussing groceries, medication prices, neighbors, or the weather in Scranton as though weather were a personal failing. Tonight she let the quiet remain.
Adrian looked at the metal cashbox on the counter.
He had brought it home after his father’s funeral. The green paint had chipped around the hinges. Inside were tax forms, military discharge papers, a warranty for a refrigerator discarded in 2004, and the photocopied adoption record.
“Did you know Elena Vale was alive?” he asked.
Ruth inhaled sharply.
That was enough.
Adrian leaned back.
“You knew.”
“I knew there was no reliable death record.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t know where she was when we adopted you.”
“But later?”
“Your father found an article.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
“How long?”
She spoke more quietly. “When you were in high school.”
Adrian looked at the ceiling.
The upstairs neighbor dragged something across the floor, stopped, then dragged it back.
“You told me she was probably dead.”
“We thought that was kinder.”
“To whom?”
Ruth did not answer.
He opened the cashbox and removed the adoption page.
His own infant footprint had been copied at an angle near the bottom. Elena’s signature appeared above a notary stamp.
“Did you receive money from the Vale family?”
“No.”
“Think before you answer.”
“I don’t need to think.”
“Mara Levin says Silas Vale arranged the adoption.”
The silence on the line changed.
Ruth said, “Who is Mara Levin?”
“A lawyer.”
“Lawyers can say anything.”
“She has the hospital bracelet.”
Ruth made a small sound.
Adrian gripped the page.
“You knew about the bracelet?”
“No.”
“What did Dad know?”
May you like
“I don’t know.”
“You were married to him for thirty-eight years.”
