Chương 4
“The porch is behind him.”
Only a narrow strip of white railing showed in the photograph.
Hannah had never noticed it.
Marcus looked away.
“My mother hated that porch.”
The uselessness of the detail made Hannah believe him.
She closed the locket.
Marcus said, “May I?”
She hesitated, then took the chain off and placed it on the table.
He picked it up with both hands.
His thumb rubbed the worn silver edge.
“My father had a terrible habit of carrying coins in the same pocket as anything he cared about.”
“That explains the scratches.”
“Yeah.”
For the first time that night, Marcus looked less like Marcus Cross.
He looked thirty-five.
He looked like somebody holding an object that had outlived a person.
Hannah finished one half of her sandwich in silence.
After a while, Marcus said, “I believe the DNA report.”
She wiped her fingers on a napkin.
“That isn’t the same as believing me.”
“No.”
“At least you know that.”
He returned the locket.
“What do you want?”
Hannah had prepared for that question.
She had rehearsed answers in the shower, in traffic, in the supply room at work, at her mother’s grave.
None of them survived being asked.
“I wanted to know if she lied.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“About him.”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
Hannah looked at the rain crawling down the diner window.
A delivery truck rolled through the parking lot, tires hissing.
“I don’t know.”
Marcus waited.
She appreciated that he did not fill the silence.
Finally she said, “I don’t want your money.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to ask whether there’s an estate issue.”
“That’s rich-person grammar for money.”
A corner of his mouth moved.
“Probably.”
“I don’t know if there’s an estate issue. I haven’t talked to a lawyer.”
“You should.”
“I know.”
“My lawyer—”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Right.”
Hannah looked at the time.
“Twenty-six minutes.”
“I owe you six.”
“You owe me more than that.”
The joke was meaner than she intended.
Marcus absorbed it.
“Yes.”
She hated that too.
He paid for both coffees before she could stop him, so Hannah left cash for her food under the plate.
Outside, David Sloan was parked three spaces away in a dark sedan.
Marcus noticed Hannah noticing.
“He’s not following you.”
“He followed me for three weeks.”
“He investigated you.”
“He sat outside my building twice.”
Marcus looked toward David’s car.
“That wasn’t necessary.”
“You hired him.”
“My mother hired him first. I continued it.”
There was always another layer.
Hannah zipped her jacket.
“Good night, Marcus.”
“When can I see you again?”
She opened the car door.
“I’ll call you.”
“You don’t have my number.”
“I’ve had your number for four months.”
He almost smiled again.
She drove home through rain that made the Van Wyck Expressway shine like black glass.
At 1:17 a.m., Hannah stood in her Queens apartment with the refrigerator door open and forgot why she had opened it.
Cold light spilled over the floor.
Her cheek hurt.
She touched it and saw Evelyn’s face again—not during the slap, but after Marcus said sister.
The tiny backward step.
Hannah closed the refrigerator.
Her apartment had belonged to her mother’s older sister before a rent increase pushed Aunt Diane to Florida. It was one bedroom, third floor, no elevator, with a radiator that clanged in winter and a kitchen drawer that had to be lifted before it would close.
Claire had hated that drawer.
Every visit, she had tried to fix it.
Every visit, she had failed.
Hannah pulled it open now.
Inside were batteries, takeout menus, a tape measure, rubber bands, and a screwdriver.
She removed the screwdriver and tightened the left rail.
The drawer still stuck.
“Perfect,” she muttered.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
Unknown number.
She stared at it.
The message read:
This is Marcus. David gave me your number with permission from nobody, apparently. I’m sorry. Also, my mother says she wants to speak with me tomorrow morning. I thought you should know.
Hannah read it twice.
Then another message appeared.
I won’t tell her anything you told me without asking you first.
Hannah typed a reply.
Deleted it.
Typed another.
Deleted that too.
Finally she wrote:
Do not give her copies of the DNA report.
Marcus replied almost immediately.
I won’t.
Hannah put the phone facedown.
At 2:06 a.m., she pulled the box from beneath her bed.
It had once held leather boots her mother bought and returned because they pinched. Claire had saved the box anyway.
Inside were eight letters.
Hannah had read them until she could identify Jonathan Cross’s handwriting by the shape of the capital C.
The earliest was dated two weeks before Hannah’s birth.
Claire,
I spoke to E. She knows there has been someone else but not who. I am not asking you to forgive my cowardice. I am asking for time to do one decent thing without making you carry the cost of it.
Hannah had always stopped there the first few times.
Not because the rest was worse.
Because cowardice was such an ordinary word.
She had expected a secret father to speak in larger language.
Jonathan did not.
The letters were full of apologies, scheduling problems, anger, practical arrangements, self-disgust, and one complaint about a hotel room in Albany where the heater made a clicking sound all night.
In the fourth letter, written three days after Hannah’s birth, he mentioned the locket.
I left Granddad’s locket with you because I wanted her to have one thing I could not later pretend I never gave.
Claire had underlined that sentence in pencil.
The next letter arrived five months later.
Then nothing for nearly a year.
Hannah had asked her mother why.
Claire had been too weak to answer clearly.
She had said only, “Evelyn made choices for everybody.”
At the time Hannah thought bitterness had exaggerated memory.
Tonight it sounded different.
May you like
She removed one of the lawyer’s letters.
The paper had yellowed at the edges.
