Chương 6
“Yes.”
“Did you tell Julian she married?”
Adrian’s eyes lowered.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she told me she didn’t want him coming after her.”
Thomas studied him.
“Did she?”
“At first.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Adrian stood.
Thomas said, “Sit down.”
“You don’t give me orders.”
“At the moment I’m the attorney trying to decide whether you committed fraud using family accounts. Sit down.”
Adrian sat.
Thomas placed a copy of Charles’s journal entry on the desk.
“A year after Nora was born, Charles wrote that Claire had married. That information came from you.”
“Yes.”
“Claire never married.”
“I was trying to close the situation.”
“You lied.”
“I simplified it.”
“You lied.”
Adrian’s face tightened.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Julian would have gone looking for her.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Thomas waited.
Adrian looked at him with sudden anger.
“You didn’t see him then.”
“I saw him every day.”
“No. You saw the version that came to work.”
Thomas said nothing.
Adrian leaned forward.
“He was barely holding the company together. Caroline had left him. Dad was threatening to remove him. Every paper in New York was writing about whether he was finished. Claire told us she was pregnant, and Julian didn’t even know they’d—”
He stopped.
Thomas caught it.
“Didn’t know what?”
Adrian leaned back.
“Forget it.”
“Did Julian know Claire was pregnant before Charles intervened?”
“No.”
“That isn’t what you were about to say.”
Adrian stood again.
This time Thomas let him.
At the door Adrian said, “You think there’s one villain in this because it makes the paperwork easier.”
Thomas looked at him.
“No. I think there were several adults and one woman who was pregnant and frightened. I’m trying to learn which adults lied after the frightened woman stopped asking them for anything.”
Adrian opened the door.
Thomas added, “And Claire contacted you last year.”
Adrian stopped.
“If you destroy anything,” Thomas said, “I’ll know where to start.”
Adrian left without answering.
The DNA results arrived Thursday afternoon.
Laura was at work.
Nora was home because everyone had agreed she should take the week off school, a decision she regretted by eleven each morning.
Thomas called.
He asked whether she wanted Laura present.
“Yes.”
They waited until seven.
Julian came to Laura’s apartment.
Nora had not expected that.
She had imagined they would go to an office with polished stone floors and people who offered sparkling water.
Instead one of the richest men in the country stood in Laura’s narrow living room while the upstairs neighbor practiced scales on a trumpet.
Laura apologized for the noise.
Julian said, “I grew up with a brother who played drums for six months. This is better.”
Nora sat at the kitchen table.
Thomas placed the laboratory report between them.
He had already explained that paternity testing was not magic, that the result was based on genetic markers and statistical probability.
Nora understood enough.
She did not need the numbers.
Thomas looked at her.
“The result supports that Julian is your biological father.”
Nobody spoke.
Upstairs, the trumpet played the same five notes again.
Nora looked at Julian.
He had gone pale.
She had expected something inside herself to click into place.
Nothing did.
Her hands were cold.
Julian’s eyes were wet, but he did not cry.
She was grateful for that.
He said, “Okay.”
Nora almost laughed.
“Okay?”
He exhaled.
“I don’t know what the correct sentence is.”
“There probably isn’t one.”
“No.”
Laura stood near the sink with both arms folded.
Julian looked at Nora.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“All of it.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
The answer surprised her.
“Thomas said they told you she left.”
“They did.”
“Then how should you have known?”
Julian looked down at the report.
“Because I accepted the answer I was given.”
Nora did not know what to say to that.
Julian continued.
“I asked Adrian where Claire went. He told me Boston. I called her number twice. It was disconnected.”
Nora frowned.
“You called?”
“Yes.”
“Thomas said he didn’t find records.”
“It was a personal phone. Thirteen years ago.”
“What happened?”
“I asked Adrian for an address. A week later he gave me a letter.”
Nora felt her stomach tighten.
“What letter?”
Julian looked toward Thomas.
Thomas’s expression changed.
“You never mentioned a letter.”
“I didn’t think it mattered until yesterday.”
“What did it say?” Nora asked.
Julian answered her.
“That Claire didn’t want me contacting her. That the pregnancy was not mine.”
The apartment became very quiet.
Nora stared at him.
“My mom never said that.”
“I know that now.”
“Do you still have it?”
Julian looked ashamed.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I believed it.”
Nora stood.
Her chair legs scraped the floor.
Everyone watched her.
She went into the bedroom, found Volume II, and returned.
She flipped toward the final pages.
“There’s a note.”
She placed the journal in front of Julian.
Near the bottom of one page, Charles had written:
A. has letter from C. Claims paternity uncertain. J. accepts.
Julian read it twice.
Thomas said, “Adrian gave Charles the same version.”
Nora looked at Julian.
“Did my mom sign the letter?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He thought.
“Claire Bennett.”
“She never signed that.”
Julian looked up.
“What?”
“She hated Bennett.”
Laura said, “Nora.”
“It’s true. She said the B was too tall and always made the rest look stupid.”
Despite everything, Laura nodded.
“She signed C. Bennett.”
Nora pointed toward the envelope on the table.
Claire’s handwriting was there on the photocopy Thomas had brought.
FOR JULIAN ONLY.
The original signature at the bottom read:
C. Bennett.
Thomas went still.
Julian stared at it.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Laura said carefully.
“No,” Thomas answered. “But it gives us something to compare.”
Julian picked up his phone.
Nora said, “Don’t call him.”
Julian stopped.
“Why?”
“Because he’ll just lie.”
Thomas watched her.
Nora looked between them.
“If Adrian wrote a fake letter, he had to make it somewhere.”
“That was thirteen years ago,” Julian said.
May you like
“So?”
“So the computer could be gone.”
