Chương 4
“That was the first plan.”
“What was the second?”
“A motel.”
“At two in the morning?”
“They have motels at two in the morning.”
“Not good ones.”
“I didn’t ask you for a review.”
His mouth tightened. “You could use the apartment upstairs.”
“What apartment?”
“The hospital keeps family suites for long admissions.”
“For families who need them?”
“Yes.”
“Then Noah and I qualify without your name.”
“I didn’t say otherwise.”
“You keep saying things that sound like otherwise.”
Adrian looked toward the bed. “Do you want me to leave?”
Part of Elena did. That part had survived seven years by imagining him as someone who had chosen absence. It knew how to hate a man who had received her letters, signed a threat, and gone on appearing in business magazines beside women with smooth hair and impossible posture.
The man in the room was harder. He had remembered the green dinosaur. He had told Noah the truth without making a promise he could not yet prove. His hand still trembled whenever the monitor changed tone.
“No,” she said. “But stop arranging my life.”
He sat in the chair beside the window. “I don’t know how else to be useful.”
“That’s a problem.”
“I’m aware.”
She almost laughed. The sound rose unexpectedly and hurt her throat. Adrian looked at her as though he had heard something from another life.
Seven years earlier, she had laughed often around him. He had been less controlled then, or perhaps she had been less observant. They had met when Elena worked evenings at a small gallery in Chicago and Adrian arrived late for a private showing his father had sponsored. He had ignored the paintings, bought a paper cup of terrible wine from the cash bar, and asked Elena why everyone was pretending a canvas covered in gray squares made them sad.
“Because the artist died,” she had said.
“Did he die painting it?”
“No.”
“Then I’m still not sad.”
She had laughed, and he had spent the rest of the evening trying to make her do it again.
The memory came now because of his expression, not because she wanted it. She turned away.
Marcus entered with two paper cups. He handed one to Adrian and offered the other to Elena.
“What is it?”
“Coffee.”
“How bad?”
“Hospital bad.”
She took it.
Marcus glanced at Noah. “The photographers moved to the public sidewalk. They can’t see this floor.”
“Thank you,” Elena said.
Adrian looked at him. “Anything from the family office?”
“It opens at eight.”
“Wake Evelyn.”
“I called twice.”
“And?”
“She declined both calls.”
Elena lifted her head. “Evelyn Cross?”
Adrian nodded.
She knew the name from the letterhead. Evelyn Cross, executive trustee of Cross Holdings, Adrian’s aunt and his father’s younger sister. Elena had never spoken to her, but her initials appeared beside a handwritten note on the final envelope Elena received: Matter resolved. No further action.
“Why her?” Elena asked.
“She managed my father’s private office,” Adrian said.
“And now?”
“She manages the family trust.”
“What does that have to do with Noah?”
“Possibly nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
“I don’t know enough to lie accurately.”
“Then why won’t she answer?”
Marcus looked at Adrian. Adrian looked at the coffee in his hand.
“My grandfather’s trust gives voting shares to direct descendants,” he said. “My father controlled them during his life. I control most now. Any biological child of mine may have a future interest.”
Elena stared at him. “He’s six years old and attached to a heart monitor.”
“I know.”
“You’re talking about shares.”
“I’m explaining why someone in my family might have cared seven years ago.”
“And why they might care now.”
“Yes.”
The coffee tasted burned. Elena drank anyway.
“What happens if the test says he’s yours?”
“To the trust?”
“To my son.”
Adrian set his cup down. “Legally, nothing happens without a process. I don’t become part of his life because a laboratory says so. I would establish paternity. We would make an agreement about support and contact, or a court would make one if we couldn’t.”
The precision frightened her more than bluster would have.
“You’ve already talked to a lawyer.”
“I texted mine.”
“Of course you did.”
“What should I have done?”
“Maybe take one hour before turning Noah into a legal file.”
His face hardened. “I am trying to make sure no one can erase him again.”
The words silenced her.
Adrian stood and walked to the glass wall. Beyond it, a nurse adjusted another child’s infusion pump. A custodian pushed a mop along the corridor with slow, practiced strokes.
“I had an accident six weeks after you left Chicago,” he said without looking at Elena. “My father sent me to a clinic in Switzerland. He called it exhaustion. It was not exhaustion.”
Elena knew about the accident. It had been reported as a minor collision involving a company vehicle. She had been eleven weeks pregnant when she saw his photograph online, walking into an airport with dark glasses and his father’s hand at his back.
“How long were you gone?”
“Four months.”
“I wrote for a year.”
“When I came back, my father said you had contacted him. He said you wanted money and no further relationship.”
“I never asked for money.”
“He showed me a signed agreement.”
“I never signed one.”
“I know that now.”
“No, you don’t. You know I’m saying it.”
Adrian accepted the correction with a small nod. “He said you had ended the pregnancy.”
Elena’s hand tightened around the cup.
“He said what?”
“He had a clinic receipt. A date. Your name.”
She stood so fast coffee spilled across her cardigan.
“No.”
“I believed him.”
“You believed I took money to get rid of our child?”
“I believed what I needed to believe.”
The honesty landed between them.
Elena pressed napkins against the wet wool. Her fingers moved pointlessly. “You could have called me.”
“I did.”
“When?”
May you like
“After I returned. The number was disconnected.”
“I lost that phone when I moved.”
