Chương 2
Victoria retrieved her glove from the floor.
She did it carefully.
Elena lowered herself in front of the stroller.
“I shouldn’t have hit him,” she told Theo.
Theo frowned at Daniel. “Did he do something?”
Elena hesitated.
“Yes.”
Daniel swallowed.
Elena added, “But I still shouldn’t have hit him.”
Theo considered this with the exhausting seriousness of four years old.
“Do you have to say sorry?”
A sound almost escaped Victoria. It might have been a laugh in any other room.
Elena pressed her lips together.
“Yes.”
She stood.
She looked at Daniel.
“I’m sorry I slapped you in front of my children.”
Daniel nodded once.
He understood the boundaries of the apology.
“So am I.”
“For what?”
He looked at the stroller.
“I don’t know yet.”
Elena’s eyes hardened.
“That’s convenient.”
The storm struck the glass again.
Somewhere near the entrance, the marble fountain continued spilling water into itself as if none of this qualified as interruption.
Daniel had come to the mountain hotel that evening for a Carter Hospitality board dinner. The company was reopening the original winter garden after a twelve-million-dollar renovation, a fact his father had described at lunch as “a useful reminder that legacy needs maintenance.”
Daniel had spent twenty years hearing Robert Carter make sentences like that.
He had learned to let them pass through him.
Now the phrase returned with different teeth.
His father was upstairs.
So were three board members, the general counsel, two regional executives, and enough of the Carter family office to turn a private disaster into a managed one before midnight.
Daniel looked toward the elevators.
Elena saw him.
“No.”
He turned back.
“No what?”
“You’re not calling him.”
“My father?”
“You’re not calling anybody until you listen to me.”
Daniel stared at her. “You just told me those children might be mine.”
“I didn’t say might.”
Victoria looked at Elena.
The blonde girl was watching her now.
Victoria crouched slowly to retrieve the rabbit, which had slipped half out of the child’s lap.
“Is this yours?”
The girl nodded.
“What’s her name?”
“Rabbit.”
Victoria glanced at Elena.
Elena closed her eyes for half a second.
“She rejects branding.”
Victoria almost smiled despite herself.
The girl reached for the toy. Victoria handed it back.
“What’s your name?”
“Grace.”
Daniel’s head moved slightly.
Elena noticed that too.
Victoria stood.
“Theo, Grace, Mateo,” she said.
Elena nodded.
Victoria looked at Daniel.
“All the same age?”
“Yes,” Elena said.
Victoria’s voice remained quiet. “Triplets.”
“Yes.”
Daniel sat down.
There was a cream leather chair behind him, and he reached it more by accident than intention.
Elena watched him lower himself.
For years she had imagined this moment in hundreds of versions.
In several, she had screamed.
In some, Daniel had laughed at her.
In one especially stupid fantasy during the children’s first winter, she had pictured throwing a glass of red wine at his white shirt while everyone around them applauded.
Reality had given her three tired children, wet boots, a cheap crossbody bag with crushed crackers in the bottom, and Daniel Carter looking as though he might vomit beside a marble fountain.
It was less satisfying than she had hoped.
Victoria took the chair opposite him.
“How long did you know?” she asked Elena.
“That I was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Eight weeks when I told him.”
Daniel rubbed his thumb against the edge of his watch.
Victoria turned to him. “And you knew.”
“Yes.”
“You said there was a pregnancy scare.”
Daniel winced.
Elena looked at him.
“A what?”
Victoria kept her eyes on Daniel. “That’s what he called it.”
Daniel’s voice was barely audible.
“I thought she lost it.”
“You thought?”
“My father told me.”
Elena laughed once.
It held no humor.
“Of course he did.”
Daniel looked up.
“What were you told?”
“That you wanted me gone.”
“I didn’t.”
“Your lawyer disagreed.”
“My lawyer?”
Elena unzipped her crossbody bag.
Daniel’s body tensed as though she might pull out a weapon.
Instead she produced a folded clear plastic sleeve.
Inside were papers.
Old papers.
She had carried them too many times. The edges had softened. One corner was bent around a coffee stain.
Elena did not hand them to him.
She held them against her coat.
“You don’t get to touch these yet either.”
Daniel nodded.
“What are they?”
“Letters from Carter Family Office.”
Victoria looked toward the elevators.
“When?”
“The week after I told him.”
Daniel shook his head.
Elena continued.
“The first one said Daniel had reconsidered the relationship and would communicate only through counsel. The second offered a confidential settlement if I agreed not to contact him again.”
Daniel’s hands became motionless.
“How much?”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes.”
“Five hundred thousand dollars.”
Victoria inhaled through her nose.
Daniel looked at Elena.
“You took it?”
Her face emptied.
Victoria said his name sharply.
Elena reached into the sleeve and pulled out a check.
It was pale blue, four years old, folded once down the middle.
VOID was stamped across the front.
“I kept it,” she said. “Because I thought someday someone might accuse me of taking it.”
Daniel stared at the check.
Elena held it higher.
“I never deposited one dollar.”
“Why would my father—”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask that like he’s a stranger.”
Daniel stopped.
Elena put the check away.
Grace began kicking her boots against the stroller footrest.
“I’m hungry.”
Theo immediately said, “Me too.”
Mateo said, “I was hungry first.”
For several seconds nobody spoke.
Then Victoria stood.
“The restaurant can send something.”
Elena’s attention snapped to her.
“We’re leaving.”
“You can’t.”
“I can walk through a door.”
Victoria gestured toward the windows.
“The highway is closed.”
Elena looked outside.
The snow had erased half the driveway.
A hotel employee was locking the outer vestibule while two men in winter jackets dragged a temporary barrier across the entrance.
Elena stared.
“No.”
Daniel rose.
“I’ll have a room opened.”
“I don’t want your room.”
“It’s a hotel, Elena.”
May you like
“It’s your hotel.”
“You need somewhere for them to sleep.”
