Chương 7
Claire had always thought it looked like the office of someone impersonating Adrian.
He preferred kitchens.
Planes.
Restaurant booths.
Anywhere papers could be spread badly across a table.
“I've been doing the same thing since I was twenty-nine,” he said. “I was good at it. Then being good became the reason I wasn't allowed to stop.”
“Victoria didn't want you to stop.”
“No.”
“Why not make her CEO?”
“Because she became reckless.”
“When?”
“Gradually.”
“Before the audit?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't tell her?”
“I told her she needed to change.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
Claire stared at him.
“You were going to replace her without ever making her understand she was losing you.”
His expression sharpened.
“She didn't own me.”
“I didn't say she did.”
“She stole money.”
“I know.”
“She may have drugged you.”
“I know.”
“She nearly killed you.”
Claire stepped closer.
“And you still don't understand what I'm saying.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You let a relationship become undefined for twenty years because the ambiguity was useful to you.”
He said nothing.
“She knew your house. Your money. Your schedule. Your fears. Your father's passwords. She knew when you slept. She knew when you lied. She knew when you were scared. And whenever she crossed a line, you called it history.”
“That isn't fair.”
“It doesn't have to be fair.”
“I never promised her anything.”
“That may be the problem.”
Adrian's face changed.
Claire immediately hated herself for the sentence.
She sat in the chair opposite the desk.
Her anger had run out of fuel.
Quietly she said, “I'm not defending her.”
“I know.”
“I don't care whether she was sad.”
“I know.”
“She could have killed our daughter.”
His eyes closed.
Claire's voice broke on the last word.
It was the first time either had said daughter aloud.
Adrian came around the desk and crouched in front of her.
Claire covered her face.
She did not sob.
She simply could not breathe properly for a few seconds.
Adrian waited.
When she lowered her hands, he touched the side of her knee.
“We should pick a name,” he said.
Claire stared at him.
“That's your response?”
“No.”
“It was an insane transition.”
“Yes.”
She laughed weakly.
Then cried anyway.
They chose no name that night.
But they started a list.
Two weeks later, the laboratory results came back.
The bottle had contained a prescription sedative that Claire had once been prescribed after her miscarriage and had stopped taking months before her current pregnancy.
The capsules Victoria had described as prenatal supplements contained the same medication in altered form.
The result still did not prove Victoria had prepared them.
But it narrowed the questions.
The police obtained records from the pharmacy and from the household.
Then came another problem.
Victoria had not filled Claire's prescription.
Claire had.
Seven months earlier.
She had forgotten.
After the miscarriage, before becoming pregnant again, she had refilled it once during a week when sleep would not come.
The bottle had remained in her bathroom drawer.
Exactly where Elena remembered seeing it.
There was no forged prescription.
No fraudulent pharmacy visit.
No clean criminal trick.
Just an old bottle inside Claire's own house.
Someone had taken it.
Detective Chen asked whether Claire could think of anyone besides Victoria with reason to do so.
Claire hated the question.
She hated Elena being interviewed again.
She hated watching a forensic technician photograph cabinets that held her underwear.
She hated wondering whether one of the people who washed towels or changed sheets had opened her drawers.
Most of all, she hated that suspicion spread faster than evidence.
Adrian wanted to replace the entire household staff.
Claire refused.
“You'll punish fifteen people because one person scared you.”
“I don't know who had access.”
“Neither do they.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Locks.”
“On everything?”
“Maybe boundaries would be a fun new family tradition.”
He did not enjoy that.
She did not care.
They compromised.
Private rooms received new access controls.
Staff credentials were reviewed individually.
Nobody was fired without cause.
Elena called the whole process “a rich person's version of buying a normal lock at Home Depot.”
Claire laughed for nearly a minute.
Three nights later, someone threw a brick through the small window of the estate's gatehouse.
A note wrapped around it called Claire a gold-digging liar.
Adrian's instinct was to move her to a private property in Vermont.
Claire's instinct was to refuse anything he suggested because she was tired of being protected in ways that removed her from her own life.
They argued in the kitchen.
“You're not staying here while people are throwing things at the gate.”
“They threw one brick.”
“That is not the reassuring statistic you think it is.”
“I have doctor's appointments.”
“We can arrange them.”
“I have friends.”
“They can come.”
“I have a life.”
“Claire.”
“No.”
He put both hands on the island.
“Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to stop making every problem disappear by increasing security.”
“I don't know how to stop a brick with emotional availability.”
The sentence was so ridiculous that Claire almost smiled.
She resisted.
Adrian saw.
“You want to laugh.”
“I absolutely don't.”
“You do.”
“I want to throw something at you.”
“Not a brick.”
“Maybe a lemon.”
“There are lemons.”
She picked one up.
He raised both hands.
She put it down.
Then she said, “I want to go back to our apartment.”
Adrian stared at her.
The Manhattan apartment had been closed for months while they prepared the house for the baby.
“You hate the noise.”
“I miss the noise.”
“There's no yard.”
“I don't use the yard.”
“You complained about the elevator.”
“I was seven months pregnant and it smelled like wet dog.”
“It still smells like wet dog.”
“Good.”
He watched her.
“You really want to leave here.”
Claire looked toward the foyer.
From the kitchen she could see one corner of the staircase.
May you like
“Yes.”
They moved the following afternoon.
