Chương 4
The third sounded almost gentle.
“I know tonight looked bad. I should have come home. I was handling something for the company. Sierra’s photograph was stupid. You’re tired, the babies are sick, and this has gotten out of proportion. Let me come get you.”
In the fourth, his voice cracked.
“Please tell me they’re breathing okay.”
Lauren replayed that one.
Mr. Harris sat in the front passenger seat, pretending to read messages on his phone. The driver waited with both hands resting on the steering wheel.
Lauren pressed the phone to her coat.
For one dangerous second, the old machinery inside her started working. Cole was frightened. The babies were his too. He had sung to Noah during the first week home, pacing the kitchen at three in the morning because it was the only room where Noah stopped crying. He had slept on the nursery floor when Lily had reflux. He had once canceled a board dinner to take Lauren back to the hospital when her incision opened.
Then other memories arrived beside those, not erasing them, only refusing to be erased themselves.
Cole standing over her while she sat on the bathroom floor, telling her she was embarrassing him.
Cole taking her car keys because she was “too emotional to drive.”
Cole telling the pediatrician Lauren had anxiety when she questioned why he had switched their insurance plan without warning.
Cole’s fingers closing around her wrist.
Lauren saved the fourth voicemail to a separate folder and turned off the phone.
The safe apartment belonged to the trust and had not been occupied since a visiting board member moved back to Chicago. It was six floors above a pharmacy, with mismatched lamps and a refrigerator containing mustard, bottled water, and one expired yogurt. Two portable cribs arrived just before dawn. Mr. Harris assembled one incorrectly, swore under his breath, and started over.
Lauren sat on the floor between the car seats, feeding Lily two ounces at a time.
“You’re terrible at that,” she said.
“I bill by the hour.”
“That explains why it’s taking so long.”
He glanced at her. “There she is.”
“Who?”
“The person who used to insult me at Thanksgiving.”
Lauren looked down at Lily’s bottle. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“No. You’ve been busy surviving politely.”
The statement irritated her because it sounded prepared. Mr. Harris had known her since childhood, but he was still a lawyer, and lawyers sometimes mistook accuracy for intimacy.
“Please don’t turn me into a case,” she said.
He tightened a screw on the crib. “Then don’t turn yourself into evidence.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you are allowed to be more than the most credible version of what happened.”
Lauren did not answer.
At five twenty in the morning, both twins slept. Mr. Harris left after arranging for a security consultant and a temporary caregiver to arrive at nine. Lauren stood by the apartment window in her socks and watched delivery trucks move along the dark avenue.
Her phone remained off.
She imagined Cole inside the penthouse, surrounded by the evidence of her absence. She had expected satisfaction. Instead she felt an ache behind her ribs that had nothing to do with victory.
The apartment door had barely closed behind Mr. Harris when someone knocked.
Lauren stiffened.
The knock came again, light and precise.
She checked the small security screen beside the door.
Sierra stood in the hallway.
Her blonde hair was no longer pinned neatly. The black coat hung open over the red dress, and she had changed from heels into thin hotel slippers. Her makeup remained elegant from a distance, but on the screen Lauren could see a gray line beneath each eye.
Lauren did not open the door.
Sierra looked directly at the camera. “I know you can see me.”
Lauren reached for her phone, then remembered it was off.
“I’m not here for Cole,” Sierra said.
“That’s not reassuring.”
Sierra flinched at the sound of Lauren’s voice through the intercom.
“I need five minutes.”
“No.”
“He used my name.”
Lauren said nothing.
Sierra glanced down the hallway. “Please. I don’t know who else to ask.”
“That seems like a problem you should have considered before coming to my home with my husband.”
“I didn’t know this was your home.”
“It belongs to my family’s trust.”
Sierra closed her eyes briefly. “Right. That. I didn’t know that either.”
Lauren watched her on the screen. Sierra looked less glamorous under the flat hallway lights, but not transformed. She was still the woman from the photograph. She was still wearing the dress Cole had admired while Lauren held two feverish babies alone.
“What did he use your name for?”
“A company. Lane Creative Partners. I thought it was for consulting.”
“Consulting on what?”
“Events. Brand appearances. I don’t know. He sent documents through an assistant, and I signed them.”
Lauren leaned her forehead against the cool wall beside the monitor. “How did you find this address?”
“His driver.”
“Cole’s driver gave you a protected address?”
“He used to work for your mother.”
That sounded possible. It also sounded dangerous.
“I’m calling Mr. Harris.”
“Fine.”
“You will wait in the hall.”
“I’m already in the hall.”
Lauren called Harris, who answered with a tired, immediate “What happened?”
When she told him, he was silent.
“Do not let her in,” he said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Security is on the way.”
Sierra sat on the carpet outside the door, drawing her coat around her knees. For eleven minutes, neither woman spoke.
Then Noah began coughing.
Sierra looked toward the door.
Lauren lifted him from the crib and held him upright against her chest. His breath came fast for several seconds, then settled.
“Are they okay?” Sierra asked through the wood.
Lauren nearly ignored her.
“They’re sick,” she said.
Sierra lowered her head. “He told me they were in Vermont.”
“You mentioned that.”
May you like
“He said you always took them away when you were upset.”
“They’re six months old. I have never taken them anywhere except the pediatrician and my sister’s apartment.”
