Chương 10
“What money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why give it back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say?”
“No.”
Daniel paced.
“Maybe Michael settled with him.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe Leonard was blackmailing him.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe Michael was trying to fix something.”
Victoria looked at him.
“You hear yourself?”
“What?”
“You sound relieved.”
Daniel stopped.
He was.
A little.
The possibility that Michael might not be the worst version of himself felt like oxygen.
Victoria’s expression softened.
“I get it.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“You loved him.”
“No.”
“In your emotionally constipated male-lawyer way, yes.”
Daniel said nothing.
Michael had been there after Sarah died.
He sat in Daniel’s kitchen at two in the morning while Daniel stared at a wall.
He drove Emma to school when Daniel forgot.
He arranged meals.
He called every morning for six months.
He gave Daniel work when grief made other clients nervous.
Human beings did not become easier to understand because they caused harm.
Sometimes kindness and cruelty occupied the same body.
That was harder.
That night, after Emma went upstairs, Daniel opened an old box of photographs Rebecca kept in the hall closet.
Sarah at nineteen.
Sarah at twenty-three with short hair she later claimed was a catastrophic error.
Sarah holding newborn Emma with an expression of exhausted suspicion.
Michael appeared in several photographs.
At hospital fundraisers.
At Christmas.
At Sarah’s fortieth birthday.
Daniel studied one taken six months before she died.
Michael held Emma on his shoulders.
She was laughing.
Daniel nearly threw the photograph away.
He stopped.
Destroying evidence of happiness would not make the happiness false.
Nor would happiness make later harm impossible.
He put the photograph back.
Rebecca stood in the doorway.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
Daniel sat on the floor.
“I keep trying to rewrite every memory.”
“Don’t.”
“How?”
“You don’t have to solve the past tonight.”
“He was good to us.”
“Yes.”
“He hurt her.”
“It appears so.”
“How do those things exist together?”
Rebecca sat beside him.
“People are inconvenient.”
“That’s your wisdom?”
“I sell houses. You want wisdom, call a monk.”
Daniel looked at the box.
“Sarah trusted him.”
“Sarah trusted lots of people.”
“Not like him.”
Rebecca was quiet.
Then she said, “She stopped letting Michael pick Emma up alone.”
Daniel looked at her.
“What?”
“About six months before she died.”
The room changed.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Becca.”
“I don’t.”
“You never told me.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“You’re telling me now that Sarah was suspicious?”
“No.”
“Then what are you telling me?”
Rebecca’s face tightened.
“She said Michael had gotten too comfortable making decisions about Emma.”
“What decisions?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I don’t know, Daniel.”
Her voice rose.
Upstairs, something creaked.
They both lowered their voices.
Rebecca continued.
“Sarah complained he bought Emma a tablet after she said no. He changed a pickup plan without asking. Once he took her to lunch instead of bringing her home.”
Daniel remembered the tablet.
He had thought Sarah was being controlling.
“He was helping.”
“That’s what you said then.”
The words landed hard.
Rebecca looked away.
“I’m not saying she suspected abuse. Don’t turn this into that. She was irritated.”
“Did she confront him?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“They argued.”
“When?”
“Two weeks before her diagnosis.”
Daniel stared.
Sarah’s illness had become the dividing wall in his memory. Everything before diagnosis had been absorbed into irrelevance.
“What did he say?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“What did Sarah say?”
“She said Michael acted like generosity bought him votes in other people’s families.”
That sounded exactly like Sarah.
Daniel almost heard her.
He pressed his thumb against his wedding ring.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Rebecca looked at him.
“She probably did.”
He felt the truth before he understood it.
He searched his memory.
Dinner.
Sarah angry about something Michael had done.
Daniel checking email.
Sarah saying, I need you to stop treating every favor from that man like evidence of sainthood.
Daniel answering, Can we not do this tonight?
The memory came not because he summoned it, but because Rebecca’s sentence opened the door.
He had told Sarah Michael meant well.
She had said intent was not a permission slip.
Daniel closed his eyes.
“She told me.”
Rebecca said nothing.
Three days later, detectives executed search warrants on several Grant Foundation offices.
The news leaked within an hour.
Reporters camped outside the foundation’s headquarters.
Past donors demanded audits.
Board members gave conflicting statements.
Two resigned.
One publicly defended Michael.
A former employee went on television and said the organization had discouraged complaints to protect fundraising.
Online, strangers decided they understood everything.
Some called Michael a monster.
Some called Emma a liar.
Some blamed Daniel for exploiting his daughter.
A popular account posted an old photograph of Emma on Michael’s shoulders and wrote, DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A CHILD AFRAID OF HIM?
Daniel saw it at midnight.
He nearly replied.
He typed:
Children can laugh with adults who later frighten them. A photograph is not a verdict.
Then deleted it.
He typed:
You do not know my daughter.
Deleted that too.
Finally he turned off the phone.
The next morning Emma asked why he had smashed a coffee mug.
He looked at the broken ceramic in the sink.
“I got angry.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“Michael?”
“People online.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
She stared at him.
“They’re saying things about me?”
Daniel sat.
Rebecca, across the kitchen, became very still.
“Some people are guessing.”
“What?”
He hated the choice.
Protect her by withholding.
Respect her by telling.
“She doesn’t need to know every comment,” Rebecca said.
Emma looked at her.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
Rebecca nodded.
“You’re right.”
Daniel chose his words.
“Some people don’t believe what happened.”
Emma’s face changed less than he expected.
“Michael said that.”
“What?”
“He said if I told, people would say I wanted attention.”
Daniel gripped his knees.
Emma continued.
“Do they?”
“Some.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
She studied him.
“Now.”
The word was not accusation.
May you like
It was fact.
Daniel nodded.
