Part 3
Mara’s throat moved as she swallowed.
“He didn’t touch me,” she said.
Claire’s face went pale.
Daniel let out a breath he had been holding, but it did not sound like relief.
Arthur’s gaze sharpened. “Then why were you running?”
Mara opened her eyes again. The answer appeared in them before it reached her mouth.
“Because he found it.”
Arthur looked at Daniel.
Daniel shook his head. “I found a phone.”
Claire’s voice was low. “Whose phone?”
“Mara’s.”
“She had her phone.”
“She has two.”
Mara shifted on the floor, suddenly trying to sit up. Arthur caught her again. She pushed his hand away, not hard enough to make him move but hard enough to tell him she wanted to.
“Don’t,” she said.
Arthur withdrew his hand.
The gesture seemed to surprise all of them, including him.
Claire crossed her arms around herself. The emerald necklace at her throat rose and fell with her breathing.
“A second phone,” she said. “Why?”
Mara gave her a look that was almost pity.
“You know why.”
Claire’s mouth opened. Then closed.
Arthur felt something cold move through him. “Claire?”
His wife did not answer.
Daniel stepped away from the center of the room and walked toward the black doors. He did not cross into the hallway. He stopped beneath the gold handles, his reflection faint in the polished panels.
“You promised her you wouldn’t bring me into this,” Mara said.
Daniel kept his back to them.
“I promised I wouldn’t say anything until you did.”
“You said you loved me.”
“I do.”
The word was soft. It did not soften the room.
Claire looked at Mara, then Daniel, then Arthur. “What is this?”
Mara laughed once, quietly. It sounded more tired than cruel.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
Arthur rose from the floor with care, though one knee complained sharply beneath him. He had stopped noticing pain in his body years ago. It had become background noise, like the hum of the climate system or the faint electrical pulse in the walls. Tonight it arrived with a precision he could not ignore.
He did not move far from Mara. He stood over her, between her and the windows.
“Explain,” he said.
Mara looked at him and shook her head.
“No.”
Arthur’s voice lowered. “Mara.”
“No.”
There had been a time when that word from his daughter would have made him laugh. She had once said it with jam on her cheeks because she did not want to wear tights to a school recital. She had said it at sixteen when he tried to hire a driver to take her to a party. She had said it at twenty-four when he offered to buy her an apartment she had not asked for.
Now the word landed with the weight of an accusation.
Claire sat down on the edge of the sofa because her legs seemed to give out beneath her. The room had been designed around the sofa: charcoal upholstery, clean edges, no softness except the throw pillows Mara had once complained looked like they belonged in a hotel lobby. Arthur had ordered it anyway.
He could not remember when Mara stopped sitting there.
Daniel turned back around. “She came to me three weeks ago.”
Mara’s head snapped toward him.
“Daniel.”
“She came to me,” he repeated, “and she said she had found something on your father’s old office account. She thought it was connected to the foundation.”
Arthur’s eyes moved to Mara.
Claire’s hand went to her throat.
Mara’s voice grew sharper. “You promised.”
“I promised I would give you time. I gave you time.”
“You gave me three days.”
“You were going to send it.”
“So?”
“So you don’t get to send something like that at two in the morning without knowing what it does to everybody.”
Mara stared at him. “Everybody?”
Daniel looked toward Arthur. “It could destroy him.”
Arthur did not speak.
Mara’s eyes flickered over Arthur’s face. “There it is.”
Claire stood again. “What did you find?”
Mara shook her head.
“What did you find?” Claire asked, louder.
The question seemed to shake something loose in Mara. She turned toward the sofa and reached under it, stretching one arm toward the handbag. Her fingers barely brushed the strap.
Daniel stepped forward.
Claire moved in front of him.
“Don’t.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“No. You’re trying to control what happens next.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened. “Claire, you don’t know what she has.”
“And neither do you.”
“I know enough.”
“You know enough to chase her across a room?”
“I know enough to be afraid.”
Arthur looked at him. “Afraid of what?”
Daniel met his eyes.
May you like
“You.”
The silence afterward was so clean Arthur could hear the faint ticking of the clock embedded in the marble mantel. He had forgotten it was there. Mara had asked him once why anyone needed a clock in a room where nobody ever stayed long enough to lose track of time.
