Chương 3
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean medically.”
“I know what you meant.”
“You need something?”
“No.”
“That sounded convincing.”
She put on her coat.
“I need everyone to stop asking me questions for the next twelve minutes.”
“Done.”
She made it eight before he called after her.
“Claire.”
She turned.
He held up her red pencil.
“You’re stealing company property.”
She stared at him.
Then, to her surprise, she laughed.
She went back for the pencil.
That laugh had been the last ordinary thing in her day.
In the elevator now, after the gala, her phone vibrated again.
She opened the clutch.
Twenty-three missed calls or messages had arrived in less than three minutes.
Ethan.
Margaret.
Ethan.
Her sister Leah.
Ethan.
An unknown number that was almost certainly someone from the gala pretending concern was not curiosity.
Claire turned the phone off.
The elevator reached the lobby.
The doors opened onto the hotel’s marble reception hall.
A doorman hurried forward.
“Ms. Mercer, your car?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Mrs. Bell’s driver is outside.”
“No.”
The man hesitated.
“Would you like us to call you a taxi?”
“Yes, please.”
He nodded as though this were the most conventional request of his evening.
That helped.
Outside, rain swept sideways beneath the hotel awning. Claire stood beside a marble planter while the doorman whistled for a cab.
Her shoes hurt.
She removed them.
The doorman looked down.
Claire held the silver heels by their straps.
“Don’t tell the dress designer.”
He smiled despite himself.
“I never saw anything.”
The taxi arrived.
Claire gave the driver Leah’s address in Brooklyn instead of the apartment she shared with Ethan.
Only after the cab pulled away did she turn her phone on again.
Leah called immediately.
“What happened?”
Claire watched rain slide across the window.
“You heard?”
“Margaret called me.”
“Of course she did.”
“She sounded like someone had shot a senator.”
Claire rested her head against the seat.
“I dropped the bracelet in her champagne.”
A beat.
“You did what?”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“All right.”
That was Leah’s gift. She rarely tried to correct reality.
“Is the baby okay?”
“I think so.”
“Do you want me to come get you?”
“I’m already in a cab.”
“Okay.”
“Leah?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you make tea?”
“What kind?”
“I don’t care.”
“That’s how I know this is serious.”
Claire closed her eyes.
By the time she reached Park Slope, the storm had weakened into steady rain.
Leah lived on the third floor of a narrow brownstone with her husband, Sam, their nine-year-old son, Owen, and a dog named Franklin who hated umbrellas.
Franklin barked at Claire’s wet gown until Leah opened the door and said, “She’s allowed.”
Claire stepped inside barefoot.
Leah looked at her for three seconds, then wrapped her arms around her.
Claire remained stiff.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
“If you hug me, I’m going to start.”
“Then I won’t.”
Leah let go immediately.
Sam appeared at the end of the hall in sweatpants.
“I put clean sheets in the office.”
Claire nodded.
He did not ask why she needed them.
Owen leaned around him.
“Aunt Claire, why are you dressed like an angel?”
Claire looked down at herself.
“Bad planning.”
He accepted this.
Leah handed him a tablet and told him to go upstairs.
The second he disappeared, Claire said, “Ethan is engaged to Vanessa.”
Leah’s face emptied.
“Lawyer Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
“The one with the perfect eyebrows?”
“The very same.”
“He’s engaged to both of you?”
“Apparently Ethan has a strong commitment to commitment.”
Leah stared at her.
Claire put the shoes on the floor.
“I know. That wasn’t funny.”
“No, it was a little funny.”
Claire pressed a hand over her eyes.
Leah pulled out a kitchen chair.
“Sit before I make you.”
Claire sat.
She told them about Vanessa’s call.
She told them about the gala.
She told them what Ethan had said at the elevator.
When she repeated it—The baby is mine, isn’t it?—her voice broke for the first time.
Sam turned away toward the stove, giving her privacy without leaving.
Leah’s expression changed slowly from shock to anger.
“He said that in front of people?”
“He said it because of people.”
“What does that mean?”
Claire looked at the table.
“He wanted them to hear the question.”
“You think he did that on purpose?”
“I think Ethan does almost everything on purpose after he’s done it accidentally.”
Leah was quiet.
Claire touched the red mark on her wrist.
“I think he panicked. I think he needed another version of the story available immediately.”
Her phone began ringing again.
Ethan.
She declined it.
He called back.
Leah looked at the screen.
“You want me to answer?”
“No.”
“I can say very few words.”
“I know.”
“Most of them are short.”
“I know.”
Claire turned the phone facedown.
A message appeared anyway.
Please come home. Please let me explain.
Then another.
I didn’t mean what I said about the baby.
Claire stared at that one until the screen went dark.
Leah read it over her shoulder.
“That’s an impressive sentence.”
Claire looked at her.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not joking.”
“You are a little.”
“Maybe a little.”
Sam put a mug of tea in front of Claire.
“Chamomile.”
“I hate chamomile.”
“Leah said you didn’t care.”
“I was emotionally compromised.”
“I’ll make something else.”
Claire wrapped both hands around the mug.
“No. It’s fine.”
Ordinary kindness almost undid her more efficiently than betrayal.
She drank the terrible tea.
At eleven fifteen, Margaret arrived.
Leah answered the door and did not invite her inside.
Claire could hear them in the hallway.
“I only need five minutes.”
“She’s had enough people needing things tonight.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
Claire stood.
The baby shifted lower, sending a pressure through her back.
She walked to the door.
May you like
Margaret wore the same white suit. The champagne stain remained on her right sleeve.
She held a small cream envelope.
