Chương 11
“The driveway two months ago?”
His gaze shifted.
“The times you checked my location and asked why I was twenty minutes late?”
“Rachel—”
“The notes you asked your mother to keep?”
His face hardened.
There.
Fast as weather.
“That was not what she told you.”
“What was it?”
“I was worried.”
“You hired an attorney.”
“Because you threatened to take Noah.”
“I said I might stay with Lena for a weekend.”
“You were pregnant and you were furious.”
“So you prepared a custody record.”
“I prepared for the possibility that you would do exactly what you did.”
Rachel stared.
He heard himself.
She saw it.
But he did not take it back.
Instead he said, “And now you’re keeping him from me.”
“I agreed to this visit.”
“Supervised like I’m dangerous.”
“You grabbed me while I was holding him.”
“I did not hurt him.”
“You keep using that sentence like it helps.”
Derek rubbed a hand over his face.
“I don’t know how to talk to you anymore.”
Rachel almost answered: That makes two of us.
Instead she said, “Then don’t. Not today.”
She left.
In the parking lot she cried so hard Karen’s assistant had to hold Noah for five minutes.
Rachel hated Derek.
She loved him.
She feared him.
She missed him.
She wanted him punished.
She wanted him to become someone who did not need punishment.
She wanted a time machine more than she wanted justice.
None of those feelings canceled the others.
That week Edward asked to meet.
Rachel chose a diner.
Not a Hayes property.
Not a hotel.
Not anywhere with chandeliers.
Edward arrived in a wool coat and complained that the booth was designed by someone hostile to knees.
Rachel ordered pancakes.
He ordered soup and regretted it immediately.
They spoke about Derek only after the food arrived.
“I removed him from management of the house,” Edward said.
Rachel looked up.
“Because of me?”
“Partly.”
“What else?”
Edward took a sip of soup.
“Derek used estate staff for personal company functions without authorization. He also represented certain expenses as foundation-related that should not have been.”
Rachel set down her fork.
“Is that illegal?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“That there are accounting questions.”
“Are you telling me because you think it helps my divorce?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if it becomes public, Derek will believe you gave me information.”
Rachel stared.
“Did I?”
“No.”
“Then why would he think that?”
“Because blaming you will be easier than accepting that his employees maintain records.”
Rachel leaned back.
“You knew he would blame me and waited until now to tell me.”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.”
Edward rubbed his left hand.
The tremor was worse that morning.
Rachel noticed.
“You okay?”
He looked irritated.
“I’m seventy-one.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Apparently you’ve been spending time with attorneys.”
She smiled despite herself.
Then her face sobered.
“What are you going to do about Derek?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Rachel’s anger returned.
“You can remove him from a house overnight but you don’t know what to do about money?”
“The house was simple. I own it.”
“And the company?”
“Is not mine alone.”
Of course.
Reality had committees.
Boards.
Contracts.
Other shareholders.
No dramatic patriarch could snap his fingers and resolve every consequence.
Edward said, “I will not invent misconduct because I’m angry at my son. The records will be reviewed.”
Rachel appreciated the answer.
She resented it too.
“What if he did something?”
“Then there will be consequences appropriate to what he did.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then there won’t.”
Rachel picked at her pancakes.
“You’re very annoying.”
“I’ve been told.”
“By Derek?”
“Frequently.”
The name changed the air.
Edward looked down at his soup.
“I love him.”
Rachel said nothing.
“That’s not an argument for protecting him.”
“No.”
“It’s simply true.”
Rachel understood.
Unfortunately.
“I love him too.”
Edward nodded.
Neither said anything for a while.
A waitress refilled coffee.
At the counter, a truck driver argued cheerfully about whether pie counted as breakfast.
The diner smelled like bacon and industrial cleaner.
Rachel looked at Edward.
“Why did you come so fast that night?”
He seemed surprised by the question.
“The alert.”
“You were already nearby.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Edward folded the paper napkin once.
Then again.
“I had been sitting in my car at the south gate for forty minutes.”
Rachel stared.
“You told me yesterday at the bakery that you wouldn’t interfere unless I triggered the alert.”
“I didn’t interfere.”
“You sat outside.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t trust myself to be farther away.”
Rachel looked at him.
That was not rescue.
Not entirely.
It was a father sitting outside a house he owned because he suspected his son might hurt someone and could not decide whether waiting was restraint or cowardice.
“Did Derek know you were there?”
“No.”
“Margaret?”
“No.”
Rachel remembered Margaret going pale before Derek.
“Then why was she scared when she heard the footsteps?”
Edward looked toward the window.
“She recognizes my walk.”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
Rachel waited.
Edward sighed.
“During our marriage, when I was angry, I would leave a room rather than argue. Then I would return when I had decided what would happen.”
Rachel did not like where this was going.
“Margaret used to say she could tell from my footsteps whether someone was about to lose a job.”
Rachel stared.
“You frightened her.”
“Yes.”
“You talk about Derek like he grew in a laboratory.”
Edward’s face tightened.
“No.”
“Good.”
He took that without defense.
Rachel looked down at her plate.
“I don’t want Noah growing up afraid of footsteps.”
Edward said quietly, “Then don’t teach him that power sounds like that.”
She looked up.
It was almost a perfect sentence.
She disliked it on principle.
“Please don’t become wise now. It’s irritating.”
Edward smiled.
“Fair.”
Rachel met her former museum supervisor two days later.
Janice Cho arrived with windblown hair and a stack of folders she had forgotten she was carrying.
May you like
She hugged Rachel.
Then stepped back.
