Chương 3
“People step on these,” she said. “Then I get a second patient.”
Claire laughed before she could stop herself.
The laugh hurt. Her eyes filled.
The nurse pretended not to notice.
Arthur waited outside with two attorneys, a communications adviser, and a trauma specialist Claire had not requested. When the physician finished documenting her injuries and said there was no fracture, Claire put on gray hospital sweats and paper slippers. The turquoise gown went into an evidence bag.
Arthur stood when she entered the hall.
“You look twelve,” he said.
“Inspiring bedside manner.”
“You hated gray when you were twelve.”
“I hated everything when I was twelve.”
“That is not how I remember it.”
“That’s because you were at work.”
The attorneys lowered their eyes.
Arthur did not.
For the first time that night, some of his control slipped. Not much. A change in the way he held his mouth. A delayed breath.
Claire regretted the sentence and did not take it back.
Outside counsel was a woman named Ruth Geller, who had represented the independent directors before and during the emergency vote. She was in her fifties, compact, silver at the temples, and still wearing the black dress she had worn to a symphony fundraiser when Arthur’s call reached her.
“The removal stands pending review,” Ruth said. “Grant’s counsel has already challenged notice, quorum, and the directors’ reliance on unverified evidence. They’ll seek an emergency injunction in the morning.”
“What morning?” Claire asked.
Ruth glanced at her watch. “This one.”
Arthur said, “They won’t get it.”
Ruth looked at him. “Certainty is expensive, Arthur. Try not to spend mine.”
Claire liked her immediately.
The communications adviser stepped forward. “We need a holding statement before markets open.”
“No,” Claire said.
Arthur answered at the same time. “Draft it.”
The adviser looked between them.
Claire said, “The company can confirm the board action. Nothing about the assault.”
“Grant will tell his version,” Arthur said.
“He always does.”
“And if you say nothing, people will fill the silence.”
“They’ll fill it if I speak.”
Arthur turned to Ruth. “Tell her.”
Ruth shook her head. “She has made a police report. Public statements can wait until she has slept.”
Arthur looked offended by the concept of sleep.
Claire leaned against the wall. Her body had begun to feel separate from her, a badly managed asset producing delayed reports. Her left hand shook. Her right did not. She tucked both into the sweatshirt pocket.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
“My house,” Arthur said.
“No.”
“You are not returning to Highland Park.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Then my house.”
Claire closed her eyes briefly.
Arthur owned a penthouse in Dallas, a ranch in West Texas, a residence in London, an apartment in Singapore, and a house on Turtle Creek so large that rooms could go weeks without seeing anyone. Claire had grown up in the Turtle Creek house. After her mother died, every object in it had seemed to become part of Arthur’s legal defense against grief.
“I want a hotel,” she said.
“Absolutely not.”
“Ruth?”
Ruth looked from father to daughter. “A secured apartment leased through independent counsel.”
Arthur’s mouth flattened.
Claire said, “That.”
At five fifteen, she entered a furnished apartment in Uptown with no photographs, no flowers, and a refrigerator containing six miniature bottles of water. David Rourke checked the rooms and windows. Arthur stood near the door while Ruth set a new phone and charger on the kitchen counter.
Claire placed the cracked phone beside them.
“I need that,” she said.
“It needs to be imaged,” Ruth replied. “Then it goes to the detective.”
“Make two forensic copies.”
“We will.”
“Not Arthur’s people.”
Ruth’s eyes flicked toward Arthur. “Agreed.”
Arthur took off his overcoat and placed it over the back of a chair.
“You should sleep.”
Claire looked at the coat.
“You’re not staying.”
“I can sit in the living room.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“You brought security to my house without telling me. You monitored Grant without telling me. You knew Maya had disappeared before the vote and didn’t tell me. I’m not going to wake up with you deciding what I’m allowed to know.”
Arthur’s face remained still.
Rourke stepped quietly into the hall.
Ruth collected her briefcase. “I’ll be downstairs.”
Arthur did not move.
Claire waited.
At last he picked up his overcoat.
At the door, he said, “The six blows were already in motion before I arrived.”
“I assumed.”
“Board removal. Credit suspension. Client notices. Personal account review. Insurance referral. Preservation demands.”
“You recited them to frighten him.”
“Yes.”
“You enjoyed it.”
Arthur looked at her for a long moment.
“Yes.”
The honesty was worse than denial.
“Go home,” Claire said.
He left.
Claire locked the door, then checked it twice.
She sat on the kitchen floor because the chairs were too upright and the bed was too far away. Her overnight bag had been delivered in a plastic hotel laundry sack. Water dripped from the seams. She opened it and removed her mother’s letters, each one wrapped in the transparent sleeves Claire had used since college. They were damp at the edges but readable.
Her medication bottle had opened. Two tablets clung to a wet hairbrush.
At the bottom of the bag lay a red toothbrush, a cotton T-shirt, three pairs of underwear, a paperback mystery she had been pretending to read for four months, and a pair of running shoes she had packed without socks.
It was not the bag of a woman leaving her marriage.
It was the bag of a woman intending to survive one night away from it.
Claire folded over it and cried without sound.
May you like
At eight thirty, Grant released a statement through Whitmore Freight’s former communications office, though he no longer had authority to use it.
The statement called the board action “an unlawful seizure coordinated by a hostile investor and a family member experiencing a documented emotional crisis.” It denied financial misconduct. It did not mention the assault. It described Grant as the grandson of the company’s founder and Arthur as an outsider attempting to erase a Texas legacy.
