Chương 5
It was addressed to Claire Reed and dated September 4, 1998.
Ms. Reed:
At Mr. Cross’s direction, our office is attempting to establish a private financial arrangement for the benefit of your daughter. Mr. Cross has specifically instructed that any such arrangement not be conditioned upon confidentiality regarding paternity.
That sentence had bothered Hannah from the beginning.
The next lawyer letter, three weeks later, said the matter had been withdrawn at Jonathan Cross’s request.
The signatures were different.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Hannah had noticed it because she spent her working life noticing whether things matched.
A bolt head sitting two millimeters proud could mean nothing or it could mean somebody had rushed.
A hydraulic fitting with fresh tool marks could mean routine service or a technician had touched something not listed in the log.
Patterns mattered.
She photographed both letters again.
At 2:42 a.m., she sent them to Marcus.
He did not answer.
At 2:47, her phone rang.
“Hannah.”
His voice sounded awake in a way that meant he had not slept.
“You saw them.”
“Who is Martin Bell?”
“The lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I looked him up. He retired years ago.”
“This second letter says my father withdrew the arrangement.”
“I can read.”
“The signature.”
“You see it too?”
Silence.
Then: “Yes.”
Hannah sat on the edge of the bed.
“My mother said Evelyn made choices for everybody.”
Marcus’s breathing changed.
“What exactly did Claire say about my mother?”
“Not much.”
“Why?”
“She was dying.”
“I understand that.”
“No, you understand the sentence. You weren’t there.”
He went quiet.
Hannah rubbed her forehead.
“That was unfair.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“She slept a lot. Sometimes she’d wake up and be perfectly clear for fifteen minutes. Then she’d call me Diane. Once she spent ten minutes furious because the hospital had lost a blue cardigan she hadn’t owned since 2003.”
Marcus made a low sound that might have been sympathy.
“She told me she met your mother twice. Once after I was born. Once when I was about six.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t finish.”
“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?”
“I don’t know.”
Another silence.
Marcus said, “My mother told me my father gave that locket away after his own father died.”
“To whom?”
“She never said.”
“And you accepted that?”
“I was sixteen.”
Hannah looked at Jonathan’s letters spread across her comforter.
“At sixteen I thought my father was a musician named Daniel who didn’t like children.”
Marcus said nothing.
“My mother made him up. Not the musician part. There was a Daniel. He played bass in some terrible wedding band. She dated him before I was born. She used him because I’d seen a picture.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Probably because saying ‘your father is married to somebody else and his wife knows we exist’ is a complicated bedtime conversation.”
“I’m sorry.”
Hannah’s eyes burned unexpectedly.
She stood.
“Don’t keep saying that.”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know.”
“That makes two of us.”
It was her line from the diner.
She disliked him a little less for remembering it.
Marcus asked, “Can I show Sloan the letters?”
“Why?”
“To find Bell.”
“I can find a retired lawyer.”
“Sloan can do it faster.”
“Your family’s speed is part of the problem.”
He exhaled.
“Okay.”
Hannah stared at the box.
Then she changed her mind.
“Find him.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
“I’ll take that.”
“Marcus.”
“Yeah?”
“If you use these letters to make this disappear—”
“I won’t.”
“You answered before I finished.”
“I know what you were going to say.”
“No. You guessed.”
He was silent.
She finished.
“If you use them to protect your company instead of finding out what happened, I’ll never speak to you again.”
This time he waited.
“I understand.”
“Good night.”
“Hannah.”
She nearly hung up.
“What?”
“My father’s name was Jonathan Avery Cross.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean Avery. That was his middle name.”
“So?”
“Look at the first lawyer letter.”
Hannah found it.
At the bottom, beneath the typed instruction reference, were the initials JAC.
The second letter carried JRC.
Hannah stared at them.
Marcus said, “His middle initial was never R.”
The following morning, Evelyn Cross arrived at her son’s townhouse at 8:30 precisely and found David Sloan already there.
Marcus had not invited him into the room.
He had invited him into the building.
That distinction mattered to Evelyn, who noticed distinctions other people considered ridiculous.
“You employ people with discretion for a reason,” she said, removing her gloves.
Marcus stood by the living-room windows.
The storm had passed. Manhattan looked rinsed and hard-edged beneath a colorless sky.
“I employ David to find facts.”
“You employ David because I introduced you to him.”
“You hired him to investigate Hannah.”
Evelyn placed her gloves on the arm of a chair.
“She was attempting to attach herself to this family.”
“She is attached to this family.”
“A laboratory result does not create a relationship.”
“No. Dad did that.”
Evelyn’s eyes chilled.
Marcus had been awake all night.
He had read Hannah’s photographs until the words stopped looking real. At four, he had gone downstairs, found an unopened bottle of wine, opened it, poured a glass, and left it untouched on the counter.
At five, he had searched old family photographs.
His father at forty.
Hannah at twenty-nine.
The resemblance was not cinematic. Nobody looking casually would gasp.
It lived in the smaller things.
The angle of one eyebrow.
The shape beside the mouth when neither was smiling.
A slight forward tilt of the chin that Marcus himself had inherited.
He had stopped looking.
Now Evelyn sat.
“You embarrassed yourself last night,” Marcus said.
Her face changed by almost nothing.
“I protected you.”
“You hit her.”
“I lost my temper.”
“You don’t lose your temper.”
“Apparently I do.”
“Why?”
Evelyn looked toward the windows.
“The same reason anybody does.”
“No.”
She turned back.
Marcus held up the clear sleeve containing the DNA report.
May you like
“You knew.”
“I knew your father had been unfaithful.”
