Chương 5
“Are you?”
“Humiliated?”
“Leaving.”
Evelyn watched a navigation light move slowly across the bay.
“No.”
Thomas nodded once.
She looked at him. “You don’t get to be proud of me.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking you still turn every question into a perimeter.”
Despite herself, she smiled.
It vanished quickly.
The wind lifted one edge of the shawl. Thomas caught it before it slipped from her arm, then released it immediately.
“I didn’t want the commendation,” she said.
“I know.”
“James knew.”
“He thought you might change your mind.”
“He thought dying made him persuasive.”
“It made him impatient.”
“You met him?”
“Twice.”
Evelyn looked at Thomas fully now.
“When?”
“Last winter. Once in Portland, once at your house.”
“He never told me.”
“He asked me not to.”
Anger moved through her so cleanly that for a moment it felt easier than grief.
“What did he want?”
Thomas looked toward the ballroom.
“He wanted the record corrected.”
“The record was correct.”
“No. It described the rescue, not what happened afterward.”
Evelyn’s fingers tightened around the shawl.
“What happened afterward was not the Coast Guard’s responsibility.”
“He disagreed.”
“James disagreed with many things near the end because disagreement was the only control he had left.”
Thomas was quiet.
Evelyn hated him for allowing the sentence to remain in the air.
“What did he tell you?” she asked.
“That you blamed yourself for Daniel Pike.”
Her gaze returned to the water.
Daniel had been twenty-four, new to the Mercy Jane, with a three-year-old daughter and a habit of wearing knit caps even in July. He had been trapped below the forward deck. By the time Evelyn learned where he was, the fire had moved through the passageway.
She had gone back twice.
She had not gone back a third time.
The investigation called that decision reasonable.
Reasonable was a word institutions used when no one wanted to say a person had chosen who could still be saved.
“James had no right,” she said.
“He was your husband.”
“That isn’t a right.”
“No.”
Thomas’s agreement took some of the anger from her.
He looked older again.
“I should have asked before accepting the assignment,” he said. “I told myself James’s request was enough. It wasn’t.”
Evelyn brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.
“Did you know Richard would cancel?”
“No.”
“Did you know about the vote?”
“Not until Nora called.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“That if the commendation wasn’t presented tonight, an important witness might not be in the room tomorrow.”
Evelyn turned sharply.
Thomas nodded toward the ballroom.
“Arthur Denning?”
“I assume so.”
“Witness to what?”
“I don’t know.”
Nora looked up from inside as though she felt them watching.
Evelyn put the shawl around her shoulders.
“Then we should ask her.”
They found Nora in the service corridor between the ballroom and kitchen. She was standing beside a cart of unused champagne flutes, typing on her phone with both thumbs. When she saw Evelyn and Thomas, she locked the screen.
“The pastry chef wants to know whether to send desserts to the library,” she said.
“No one is in the library,” Evelyn replied.
“He’s upset. I gave him a task.”
Nora looked toward the kitchen doors, where staff carried trays through steam and fluorescent light.
Up close, she appeared exhausted. A small tear in the hem of her dress had been repaired with black tape. Her hair, pinned neatly at the start of the evening, had loosened near one ear.
“Why did you call Commander Vale?” Evelyn asked.
Nora looked at Thomas.
He said, “I told her.”
“Of course you did.”
Nora pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Mr. Whitmore told me at four-thirty that the Coast Guard presentation was canceled. He said the family had decided it would be inappropriate.”
“Which family?”
“He didn’t specify.”
“Did Celeste speak to you?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Nora glanced again toward the kitchen.
“She asked whether you had signed the proxy materials for tomorrow.”
Evelyn felt the evening narrow.
“I haven’t.”
“I told her I didn’t handle board documents.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Evelyn waited.
Nora’s shoulders dropped.
“I handle everything people don’t want recorded as their responsibility.”
Thomas looked down the corridor to make sure no one stood nearby.
Nora lowered her voice. “Mr. Whitmore asked me to place a packet in your room before dinner. A board resignation and a statement saying grief had made it difficult for you to continue serving.”
Evelyn stared at her.
“I didn’t put it there,” Nora said.
“Where is it?”
“My desk.”
“Why?”
“Because your signature line was already dated.”
Thomas’s expression sharpened. “Signed?”
“No. Just dated. But there was a note from legal saying an electronic signature could be added after verbal confirmation.”
“Whose legal?” Evelyn asked.
“The foundation’s outside counsel.”
Richard had used the same firm for thirty years.
Nora continued. “I thought you had agreed. Then Celeste asked whether you’d seen the packet. She seemed angry when I said no.”
“And then she pulled the shawl.”
Nora looked at Evelyn’s shoulders.
“I saw her watching you before dinner. I didn’t know what she intended.”
“Arthur is a witness to what?”
Nora opened her phone and found a photograph.
It showed a memorandum on Whitmore Foundation letterhead. The top half concerned the Harbor Resilience Initiative. Near the bottom, a paragraph authorized reimbursement to Whitmore Holdings for preliminary shoreline work at Tidewatch and two commercial properties.
Arthur Denning’s name appeared beneath a signature line.
The signature did not look like his.
Evelyn zoomed in.
“He didn’t sign this.”
“I don’t think so,” Nora said. “He asked me tonight why his approval was listed in the donor briefing.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In the files Celeste sent to the printer.”
Thomas asked, “Do you have the original?”
“No. I photographed it because I thought I had attached the wrong version.”
May you like
Evelyn handed the phone back.
“You invited Thomas so Arthur would hear the commendation?”
