Chương 8
Elena stared at Adrian.
He looked genuinely confused. “I knew nothing about this.”
Dana’s eyes moved between them. “I’m going to request an administrative review. Until then, no one is asking you for payment.”
“Who is the liaison?” Adrian asked.
“I’m not discussing staff names until compliance reviews it.”
“Dana.”
She closed the folder. “Mr. Cross, donating to a hospital is not the same as running one.”
Elena liked her immediately.
After Dana left, Adrian called his foundation director. He put the call on speaker at Elena’s insistence.
The director, a man named Thomas Reed, sounded bewildered. The foundation did not normally identify applicants through family connections. The liaison note had come from Evelyn’s office, which retained oversight of legacy grants established by Victor Cross.
“When?” Adrian asked.
“September twenty-third.”
Elena calculated. Five days after Noah’s sixth birthday. Three weeks after her pediatrician submitted the application.
“Who accessed it?” she asked.
Thomas paused. “I need to review logs.”
“Do that,” Adrian said.
“No,” Elena interrupted. “Have hospital compliance review the logs.”
Adrian looked at her.
“If your staff investigates your family, they find what your family wants found.”
Thomas said carefully, “That may be wise.”
Adrian’s eyes remained on Elena. “Fine. Send everything to hospital compliance. Preserve the original files.”
Thomas agreed.
When the call ended, Elena sat beside Noah and felt the room tilt without moving.
Seven years ago, someone had hidden her letters.
Three weeks ago, someone had recognized her name on a hospital-aid application.
That was not old damage. It was active.
“She knew about Noah before tonight,” Elena said.
Adrian did not answer immediately.
“She may have suspected,” he said.
“She marked him as privately covered. By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your aunt.”
“I mean I don’t know what she intended.”
“I do. She wanted the application to disappear without the hospital asking why.”
Adrian’s phone vibrated. He silenced it.
“You should answer,” Elena said. “It may be another person explaining how none of this is anybody’s fault.”
He looked at the screen. “It’s the board chair.”
“About the foundation?”
“About the photograph.”
“Of course.”
He walked into the corridor to take the call.
Elena listened through the glass despite herself. His voice was too low to make out every word, but she heard no, child, medical, and absolutely not.
When he returned, his expression had hardened again.
“They want me away from the hospital.”
“Why?”
“There’s a shareholder meeting next week. They think my presence creates speculation about succession.”
Elena looked at Noah’s sleeping face. “He’s not a succession issue.”
“I said that.”
“And?”
“They heard it as an emotional response.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
The answer disarmed her.
Adrian sat on the edge of the couch. “They asked whether I had reason to believe he was mine. I refused to answer.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not doing them favors.”
“No. But you did me one.”
He rubbed his thumb across the engraved line on his locket. “Evelyn will offer you money.”
“She already did, seven years ago.”
“She’ll offer enough that refusing feels irresponsible.”
“You don’t know me very well.”
“I know what hospital bills look like.”
“You think that means you know what I’ll do?”
“I think it means she will try to turn love into arithmetic.”
Elena looked at him.
That sentence did not sound like the Adrian who had once taken her to dinner and ordered without asking what she liked. It sounded older. Damaged in ways money had not repaired.
“What happened at the clinic?” she asked.
He understood which clinic she meant.
“I was using pills to sleep,” he said. “Then pills to wake up. My father considered addiction a public-relations defect. After the accident, he gave me a choice between treatment in private and losing my place in the company.”
“So you went.”
“I was unconscious when he made the first part of the choice.”
Elena looked at the scar across his eyebrow.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Only me.”
“That isn’t nothing.”
“No.”
He folded his hands. “When I came back, I let him decide which parts of my life had been real. It was easier than admitting I could not remember some of them clearly.”
“Did you remember me?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in his voice startled her.
“I remembered the way you hated pears,” he said. “I remembered you slept with the radio on. I remembered that you lied about liking jazz because you wanted to impress a gallery owner, then fell asleep during the concert.”
“I was tired.”
“You snored through the trumpet solo.”
“I do not snore.”
“You did that night.”
She looked down before he could see her smile.
He continued more quietly. “I remembered giving you the locket. My father said you mailed yours back.”
Elena took Noah’s locket from beneath his gown and held it in her palm.
“Did he show it to you?”
“No.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes.”
The smile vanished.
Adrian looked at the floor. “I was very good at believing things that prevented me from asking difficult questions.”
Noah slept through the night without another episode.
In the morning, Elena showered in the family bathroom and wore the same muted brown dress because she had nothing else. A hospital volunteer brought toiletries and a sweatshirt printed with the name of a local college. Elena changed into it while her cardigan dried over the heating vent.
Adrian had disappeared before she woke.
She told herself she was relieved.
At eight thirty, he returned carrying a paper bag from a discount store. Inside were sweatpants, T-shirts, underwear, socks, a toothbrush, and a pair of slip-on shoes in Elena’s size.
She stared at the contents. “How do you know my size?”
“I checked your shoe.”
“That is unsettling.”
“I asked Marcus to check your shoe.”
“That is more unsettling.”
Marcus stood near the door. “For the record, I declined.”
Adrian looked at him. “You told me the number.”
“I observed it while refusing.”
May you like
Elena held up the sweatpants. “These are enormous.”
“They had small and medium. I chose medium.”
