Chương 3
“What exactly did Sloan test?”
“Us.”
“How?”
“You gave him your sample.”
Marcus frowned.
“I gave him a cheek swab because my mother said you were trying to extort us.”
Hannah’s mouth went still.
There it was.
Not sister.
Extortionist.
He saw her expression.
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew enough to test me.”
“I knew a woman I had never met was claiming my dead father was hers too.”
“I never said he was mine.”
“You sent a letter.”
“I sent an email asking to speak to you about Jonathan Cross.”
“You included a photograph of the locket.”
“Because otherwise I was a stranger asking a rich man to meet me.”
“That didn’t help.”
“No,” she said. “Apparently it got me investigated.”
Marcus rubbed his thumb along the edge of the table.
“My mother received your email first.”
“How?”
“My office forwards family-related correspondence to security.”
“Of course it does.”
“She told me there had been attempts before.”
“Women?”
“People claiming things.”
“About your father?”
“About the family.”
The waitress brought coffee.
Hannah wrapped both hands around the mug.
Marcus waited until she left.
“My mother said you approached her two months ago and demanded money.”
Hannah took one sip.
The coffee was awful.
She drank it anyway.
“I approached your mother because she answered my email instead of you.”
“What did you ask her for?”
“A conversation.”
“What did she offer?”
Hannah looked at him.
His face changed.
“How much?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Marcus leaned back.
“To do what?”
“Sign something saying I had no claim against your father’s estate, your family, Cross Holdings, Cross Foundation, Cross anything else anybody could think to put on twelve pages.”
“Did you sign it?”
“No.”
“My mother says you did.”
“I didn’t.”
“She says the money was transferred.”
“Not to me.”
Marcus’s fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
“You’re sure.”
Hannah laughed once.
He flinched.
“Yes, Marcus. I’m sure whether I received a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Do you have the document she gave you?”
“Photographs of it.”
“Why photographs?”
“Because she wouldn’t let me leave with it.”
His eyes closed for a moment.
The grilled cheese arrived.
Hannah waited until the waitress had gone again.
Then she ate half a fry.
Marcus watched her.
“You really can eat right now?”
“My mother used to say panic on an empty stomach was just panic with a headache.”
The words came out before Hannah could stop them.
She looked at the plate.
Marcus looked at her.
“What was her name?”
“Claire.”
“Claire Reed?”
“Yes.”
He repeated it under his breath.
Hannah hated that he could say her mother’s name for the first time while Hannah had carried his father’s for months.
“Did my father know about you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said he gave her the locket the night you were born.”
“That’s what she told me.”
“But did he know you were his daughter?”
“I think so.”
“Think?”
Hannah put the fry down.
“My mother died in April. Pancreatic cancer. Eleven weeks from diagnosis to funeral. She spent most of those eleven weeks either in pain, sedated, angry, pretending she wasn’t afraid, or telling me to throw away things I later found out she had hidden for thirty years.”
Marcus said nothing.
“She gave me the locket four days before she died. I’d seen it once when I was a kid. She kept it in a sewing box even though she couldn’t sew. She said my father gave it to her when I was born. Inside was his picture.”
“You knew his face?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know it was him?”
“She told me his name.”
Marcus stared at his coffee.
Hannah continued.
“I thought she was confused. She was on morphine. Then she told me where to find a box in her bedroom closet.”
“What was in it?”
“Letters.”
His head came up.
“From him?”
“Some.”
“How many?”
“Eight from your father. Three from a lawyer. Two bank statements. An old photograph. A hospital bracelet from when I was born. Things she apparently thought were worth saving and not worth telling me about.”
“Where are they?”
“Safe.”
“I need to see them.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
Hannah picked up the sandwich.
“Twenty minutes is almost over.”
“Hannah.”
The sound of her name in his voice bothered her.
Not because it was intimate.
Because it was careful.
She had wanted recognition. Not necessarily from Marcus Cross specifically, but from somebody who could look at the same evidence and say, yes, that happened, yes, Claire had told the truth, yes, Hannah’s life had not been built on one dying woman’s medication-clouded confession.
Now recognition had arrived in a diner after midnight, and it felt like being examined.
Marcus leaned forward.
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No. You’re trying to verify.”
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
She respected it more than she wanted to.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because my father is dead. My mother lied about the payment. Maybe she lied about other things. I have a DNA report saying you and I share a father. I have a locket I haven’t seen since I was sixteen hanging around your neck. And I’m sitting across from somebody who knows things about my family that I don’t.”
Hannah swallowed.
“You haven’t seen it since you were sixteen?”
He looked at the locket beneath the partially open jacket.
“My father used to keep it in the top drawer of his desk. He told me it belonged to his grandfather. When I was a kid I thought there was treasure inside.”
Hannah touched the chain.
“What was in it then?”
“A photograph of my grandmother.”
Hannah slowly pulled the locket out.
Marcus did not reach for it.
She pressed the catch.
Inside was the faded photograph of Jonathan Cross, younger than Hannah had ever seen him, maybe thirty-eight, maybe forty. He was not smiling. He looked irritated at whoever had taken the picture.
Marcus stared.
May you like
“That was from our house in Maine.”
“You’re sure?”
