Chương 3
Claire had heard that detail because Mrs. Alvarez repeated it whenever anyone suggested there should have been some warning.
“Fennel,” she would say angrily, as if the absurdity of his final complaint proved the world had behaved improperly.
Adrian looked at Victoria.
“He gave a sample.”
“Yes.”
“So he knew there was a test.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
Victoria said nothing.
“How long?”
“Adrian.”
“How long?”
“Since April.”
Claire watched his fingers tighten around the blanket.
The baby moved.
Adrian’s hand loosened instantly.
That was when Claire understood he would not put the child down just because the truth had become unbearable.
Victoria rubbed one thumb across the corner of the laboratory report.
“Natalie came to me first.”
“Why?”
“She was scared.”
“Of me?”
“Of everybody.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It was not convenient. Nothing about that conversation was convenient.”
Adrian gave her a cold look.
Victoria went on.
“She said she and Ethan had been together once.”
Claire had known there had been an affair.
She had not known how often.
Adrian leaned back by half an inch.
“Once.”
“That’s what she said.”
“And you believed her.”
“I believed she believed it mattered.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I wasn’t conducting an investigation into their sex life.”
His expression sharpened.
Victoria looked away.
That, more than anything, seemed to tell him she was telling the truth.
Claire moved toward the sideboard and poured herself water without asking.
Her hand was still shaking.
The glass clicked against the bottle.
Adrian looked at her.
“How much?”
She knew exactly what he meant.
“Ten thousand.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
Adrian gave a quiet laugh with no amusement in it.
“My wife paid you ten thousand dollars.”
“Yes.”
“To hide the report.”
“Yes.”
“Cash?”
“A cashier’s check.”
“You deposited it.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
Claire took a drink.
“It’s in my apartment.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a coward in stages.”
Victoria looked at her.
Claire shrugged one shoulder.
“I was brave enough not to spend it. Not brave enough to give it back.”
Adrian’s expression changed again, this time not quite anger.
“Why did you take it?”
Claire had spent three weeks asking herself the same question and inventing answers that sounded better.
She could have said she was afraid of losing her job.
She had been.
She could have said Natalie was vulnerable and crying and had begged.
She had.
She could have mentioned the balance on her credit card, the two months of rent she had put on it after her old landlord sold the building, or the student loan from a medical-assistant program she had quit halfway through because she could not keep missing evening shifts.
All of those things were true.
None was the whole truth.
Claire looked at Adrian.
“Because ten thousand dollars is a lot of money to me.”
Victoria shifted in her chair.
Adrian said nothing.
Claire felt heat rising into her face.
“I wish I had a better answer.”
“No,” he said. “I’m getting tired of better answers.”
The baby made a small snuffling sound.
Adrian lowered his eyes.
Claire watched him check the child’s face as if the report might have altered it.
It had not.
The same dark fuzz covered the baby’s head. The same tiny crease ran from his nose to the top of his lip. One ear folded slightly more than the other.
Adrian had said at breakfast on Wednesday that the ears came from his father.
Claire had been holding a coffee pot when he said it.
Natalie had smiled.
Claire had nearly dropped the pot.
“Where is she?” Adrian asked again.
Victoria said, “She wouldn’t tell me.”
“She called you.”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“That she couldn’t come back yet.”
“Yet.”
“She was crying.”
“I don’t care.”
Claire looked at him.
He caught it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
Claire set her glass down.
“You care.”
His eyes went flat.
“You’ve known me for how long?”
“Fourteen months.”
“And you’ve decided you understand what I care about.”
“No.”
She nodded toward the baby.
“I just watched you warm his bottle twice because the first time you said it felt too hot on your wrist.”
No one spoke.
Adrian looked down at the infant.
Claire regretted the sentence immediately.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it had been intimate.
Victoria stood.
“I’ll call Natalie again.”
Adrian’s head came up.
“No.”
“She needs to know—”
“No one tells her anything until I speak to my lawyer.”
Victoria’s mouth tightened.
“She has a newborn.”
“So do I.”
The words came out before he could stop them.
The room changed.
Adrian’s eyes closed briefly.
Claire looked away.
Victoria stared at her brother.
When he opened his eyes again, the control had returned.
He placed the laboratory report on the desk.
“Call Samuel Grant.”
Victoria frowned.
“At this hour?”
“Yes, Victoria. At this hour.”
Samuel Grant had been the Cole family’s attorney longer than Claire had worked for them. He was a compact man in his sixties who wore the same style of brown shoes with every suit and had once spent ten minutes in the kitchen explaining to Mrs. Alvarez that he could not eat walnuts because “my throat has strong opinions.”
He arrived at eight twenty.
By then the baby had cried twice, spit up on Adrian’s black shirt, and gone back to sleep.
The stain remained.
Adrian refused Claire’s offer of another shirt.
Samuel noticed it when he entered the study but had enough professional instinct not to mention it.
He read the report.
Then he read it again.
After that he asked three questions in a row.
“Who requested the test?”
“Natalie,” Victoria said.
“Who provided Ethan’s sample?”
“Ethan.”
“Was it collected through the lab?”
Victoria nodded.
“I believe so.”
Samuel looked up.
“You believe so is not useful.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Good. Then we don’t say it.”
He turned a page.
“There’s a chain-of-custody number. That can be verified.”
May you like
Adrian stood by the window holding the baby.
“Does this make him Ethan’s son legally?”
