Chương 4
He had one hand resting on its cover.
He looked less like the man whose face appeared on business magazines and more like someone who had misplaced thirteen years and had just been told they would not be returned.
Nora looked away before he could see her watching.
At Laura’s apartment in Sunnyside, she slept for two hours.
At four seventeen she woke because someone upstairs dropped something heavy.
For one confused second, she thought her mother was in the next room.
Then the ceiling came into focus.
Laura had left the hall light on.
Nora stared at it.
The grief arrived not as sadness but as irritation.
She hated the unfamiliar pillow.
She hated Laura’s humming refrigerator.
She hated the blue toothbrush still in its pharmacy packaging beside the bathroom sink because Laura had bought it specifically for her.
She hated Julian Vale for existing.
That one felt unfair, but grief did not seem interested in fairness.
Nora got up and found Laura asleep on the couch with the television still glowing.
A half-eaten bowl of cereal sat on the floor.
Nora covered her with a blanket.
Then she sat at the kitchen table and opened Volume II.
She had already read every page after finding it in the metal lockbox under her mother’s bed.
She read them again.
Charles Vale’s handwriting began in 2009.
Business notes.
Names.
Meetings.
Complaints about hotel pillows.
A surprisingly long argument with himself about whether to replace a chef at the family estate.
Then Claire appeared.
At first only as “C.B.”
Later by name.
Claire Bennett has become too close to J.
Claire says she is pregnant.
A. agrees J cannot be told yet.
Claire refuses termination.
Offer separate housing if needed.
Julian Vale must never be told Claire is carrying his child.
The sentence Nora had read aloud was followed by another line she had not quoted.
Not until this transaction closes.
Nora had noticed it the first time.
She had deliberately left it out at dinner.
That bothered her now.
She had told herself the second sentence did not matter.
Maybe it did.
She turned several pages.
Three months later:
Claire returned funds.
A. says she has gone to Boston.
Let this end.
Then, eight months later:
A. reports C. married. Child presumably husband’s.
There were no further references for nearly five years.
Then:
Saw Claire Bennett outside Lenox Hill. Thought impossible. A. says mistaken.
Nora ran her finger beneath the line.
Her mother had lived in New York the entire time.
She had never lived in Boston.
At eight in the morning Laura came into the kitchen and found Nora asleep with her cheek on the open journal.
Laura made coffee.
Nora woke when the machine clicked.
“You know,” Laura said, “when most kids sneak out, it’s usually for something more fun.”
Nora sat up.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry unless you’re planning not to do it again.”
Nora thought about that.
“I can’t promise.”
“I know.”
Laura poured coffee.
She did not offer any to Nora because they had already had that argument several times.
Nora hated coffee but believed thirteen was old enough to make the decision herself.
Laura believed no one who described coffee as tasting like burned dirt needed caffeine.
“Thomas called,” Laura said.
Nora straightened.
“The test is tomorrow morning.”
“Why not today?”
“Because apparently laboratories have schedules even when billionaires are upset.”
Nora looked at the journal.
Laura sat across from her.
“Do you want him to be your father?”
The question was so direct Nora almost resented it.
“I want to know if he is.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
Laura drank her coffee.
Nora picked at a tear in the pharmacy receipt.
“I don’t know what wanting him would mean.”
Laura nodded.
That was one of the things Nora liked about her. She did not treat uncertainty like an incorrect answer.
After breakfast, Nora checked her phone.
There were thirty-seven messages from school friends.
Most were condolences.
Three asked when she was coming back.
One was from Maya Hernandez, who had been Nora’s best friend since sixth grade.
Are you alive?
Nora replied:
Unfortunately.
Maya responded immediately.
Good. Algebra test Tuesday.
Nora stared at the message until something almost like laughter escaped her.
Laura looked over.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
For ten seconds Nora felt thirteen.
Then Thomas called.
He asked whether he could come by.
Laura made him wait until noon.
Thomas arrived without an assistant, carrying a paper bag from a bakery.
“I wasn’t sure what people eat during family crises,” he said.
Laura looked inside.
“Apparently croissants.”
“I panicked.”
Nora liked him slightly more.
They sat in the living room.
Thomas did not ask for the journal.
That made her trust him enough to take it from her backpack herself.
He opened to the pages she marked.
“You saw the Boston entry?”
“Yes.”
“And the marriage.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother never lived in Boston?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“She hated Boston.”
“Why?”
“She said the roads were designed by drunk cows.”
Thomas blinked.
“She went once for a conference.”
He wrote something on a legal pad.
Nora frowned.
“You’re writing down the drunk cows?”
“I’m writing that her known residence remained New York.”
“Oh.”
Thomas turned another page.
“Julian asked me to review records from the family office.”
“Can you?”
“I’ve been counsel and adviser to the family for twenty-two years.”
“So yes?”
“Usually.”
“Was that a lawyer answer?”
“Yes.”
Laura ate a croissant.
“What did you find?”
Thomas looked at Nora.
“Before I tell you anything, I need you to understand that we don’t know yet whether Julian is your biological father.”
“I know.”
“And family records can be incomplete.”
“I know.”
“And people lie in writing as easily as they lie aloud.”
Nora waited.
Thomas rubbed his thumb along the edge of the pad.
“There were three payments authorized for Claire thirteen years ago.”
Nora felt Laura go still.
“How much?”
May you like
“The first was seventy-five thousand dollars.”
Nora looked at him.
