Chương 10
Luis was helping another mechanic jump-start a truck.
Normal life continued ten yards away.
“Say the settlement report is inaccurate.”
“Then they ask how.”
“Say it’s inaccurate.”
“And if they ask whether you’re my sister?”
She swallowed.
“Don’t answer.”
“All right.”
“Marcus.”
“Yes?”
“You don’t get to announce me.”
“I know.”
He did not sound offended.
That mattered.
The next morning, Hannah’s name appeared online anyway.
A photograph from her employee badge surfaced on a gossip site. It made her look vaguely criminal, mostly because employee badge photographs made everyone look criminal.
By lunch, somebody had found Claire’s obituary.
By evening, someone had posted photographs of Hannah’s apartment building.
A man she had dated for six months when she was twenty-four texted, Hey are you secretly rich now lol.
She blocked him.
At work, Ken moved her temporarily to an interior maintenance bay away from windows.
“You don’t have to,” Hannah said.
“Three people tried to photograph you through the fence.”
“I’m not a panda.”
“Pandas have security.”
Luis brought her coffee without asking and said nothing for an entire minute.
Then, “If you become a billionaire, can I have your parking spot?”
“I don’t have a parking spot.”
“Exactly. Stay humble.”
She threw a shop rag at him.
That night Marcus came to Queens.
Hannah almost refused to let him upstairs because there were two photographers across the street.
Then she realized refusing would create photographs of him standing outside.
She buzzed him in.
He arrived carrying pizza.
“Why?”
“You told me not to fix things with money.”
“So you bought carbohydrates.”
“I panicked.”
She took the box.
“That may be your first correct instinct.”
Marcus looked around the apartment.
He noticed the crooked blinds, the stack of technical manuals, Claire’s ceramic bowl full of loose change, the kitchen drawer that remained slightly open.
His gaze stopped at a framed photograph on the shelf.
Hannah and Claire at Coney Island.
Claire was laughing into the wind.
Marcus stepped closer but did not touch it.
“She looks like you.”
“Everybody says I look like her.”
“You do.”
Hannah put two plates on the counter.
They ate standing up because her small table was covered with mail.
Marcus took off his coat.
“You own jeans?” Hannah asked.
He looked down.
“I’m trying to understand whether that was an insult.”
“It was surprise.”
“Rich people do have legs on weekends.”
“This is a Tuesday.”
“Fair.”
He opened a can of seltzer.
Hannah watched him struggle with the tab because his thumbnail was too short.
It was the first clumsy thing she had seen him do.
She liked it more than she should have.
“David found the rest of the payment.”
Marcus’s voice changed.
Hannah put down her pizza.
“Where?”
“One hundred seventy thousand eventually reached an account controlled by Paul Hensley.”
“The old security lawyer.”
“Yes.”
“And the rest?”
“Fees, transfers, cash withdrawals.”
“Did your mother pay him to forge my name?”
“I don’t know.”
“But?”
“But he spoke to her chief of staff eleven times in the week before the settlement document appeared.”
Hannah leaned against the counter.
“Have you asked her?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“That Hensley told her you had retained him.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I know.”
“She met me.”
“I know.”
“She knew I didn’t have a lawyer.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
Marcus stopped.
Hannah pressed her palms to her eyes.
“Sorry.”
“No. You’re right.”
“What did she say when you told her it was forged?”
“She said she didn’t know that.”
“Do you believe her?”
Marcus took a long time.
“No.”
Hannah lowered her hands.
The answer did not feel like victory.
“She’s your mother.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know you don’t believe her?”
“Yes.”
“How did that go?”
Marcus stared at the pizza.
“She asked me to leave her house.”
Hannah blinked.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked up.
Now it was his turn to dislike the phrase.
Hannah almost smiled.
“She also resigned temporarily from the foundation board this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Pressure.”
“From you?”
“From attorneys. Board members. Me.”
Hannah’s stomach tightened.
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“I know.”
“Marcus.”
“She used Cross security to make a false complaint against you.”
“She did?”
“We confirmed the order came from her office.”
Hannah looked at the window.
Across the street, a photographer sat in a parked car.
“What happens to her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always say that now.”
“I’m learning.”
They finished eating.
Marcus helped clear the plates.
He tried to close the kitchen drawer.
It stuck.
He tried again.
“You have to lift it.”
He lifted.
It closed.
“That seems fixable.”
“My mother tried for eight years.”
“So it’s hereditary.”
Hannah laughed.
Then she stopped because grief arrived without warning.
Her mother’s hands on that drawer.
Her mother muttering, cheap hardware, every single time.
Hannah turned away.
Marcus saw enough to understand he should not speak.
She stood at the sink until the moment passed.
When she turned back, he was looking at Claire’s photograph again.
“Do you want to know something terrible?” Hannah asked.
“Probably.”
“She would have liked you.”
Marcus looked at her.
“She watched one of your interviews after she got sick. You were talking about scholarships.”
“I remember that interview.”
“She said you looked exhausted.”
“That was her opinion?”
“Her first one.”
“What was the second?”
“That your tie was ugly.”
Marcus looked offended.
“It was navy.”
“It had little airplanes on it.”
“My father gave me that tie.”
Hannah stared at him.
Then they both laughed so hard Hannah had to sit down.
The laughter ended awkwardly.
Everything did now.
Marcus looked at his hands.
“Hannah.”
“What?”
“I have something I need to tell you before David does.”
Her body went tight.
“Okay.”
“The archive from Bell’s old firm turned up part of the Cross file.”
She stopped breathing.
“There’s a memo.”
“From who?”
“Bell’s associate. Twenty-eight years ago.”
“What does it say?”
May you like
Marcus did not reach for his phone.
“He documented a call from my mother.”
