Part 6
Elena laughed.
The sound came out wrong, a small bark that startled her.
Thomas looked alarmed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You needn’t be.”
“It’s the oat milk.”
“Yes.”
“It expired?”
“Three days ago.”
“In this house?”
He almost smiled. “Standards have collapsed.”
The humor lasted only a second, but Elena felt it move through the room like fresh air.
Thomas set the tray down. Rachel accepted black coffee. Elena chose tea and forgot to drink it.
At five, Marianne joined them with preliminary documents from the company. The records showed that Julian had pledged interests in several subsidiaries as collateral for private loans. Two signature pages bore Elena’s name. One related to her grandmother’s trust, which Julian had no legal authority to encumber.
“Is that my signature?” Elena asked.
Rachel enlarged the image on the screen.
It looked like hers.
The angle of the E was slightly wrong. The final stroke in Vale curved too high. She had spent seven years signing invitations, foundation letters, real estate forms, and charity acknowledgments beside Julian. He had watched her do it hundreds of times.
“I didn’t sign this,” she said.
“Are you certain?” Marianne asked.
“Yes.”
Rachel studied her. “There can’t be uncertainty later.”
“There isn’t.”
Marianne opened another file. “The document was notarized by an employee of Vale Consolidated.”
“Who?” Elena asked.
“Cynthia Marlow.”
Elena knew the name. Cynthia had been Julian’s executive assistant for nine years. She sent birthday flowers, rescheduled flights, remembered allergies, and once located a replacement for Elena’s discontinued face cream during a trip to Chicago.
“Has anyone spoken to her?” Rachel asked.
“She stopped answering calls at nine thirty,” Marianne said. “Her company phone is off. Her personal number goes to voicemail.”
“Could Julian have told her to disappear?”
“Possibly.”
“Could the board?”
Marianne’s expression cooled. “No.”
Rachel did not apologize for asking.
Elena looked again at the signature. “When was this notarized?”
“May fourteenth.”
She remembered May fourteenth because Julian had been in New York and she had been at a clinic in Washington for a fertility consultation she had not told him she intended to cancel.
According to the document, she had appeared before Cynthia in Richmond at two in the afternoon.
“I can prove I wasn’t there,” Elena said.
The clinic had checked her in electronically. Her phone’s location history might show the trip. Her car had entered the parking garage. There would be records, traces of a day she had considered private.
Rachel began writing a list.
Elena watched her and felt the first real cost of evidence. To establish one lie, she would have to expose another part of her life: the appointment, her doubts about having a child, the silent decision that had formed before she admitted the marriage was over.
Julian had wanted children in the abstract, the way he wanted the restoration of the south stable and a seat on the museum board. He spoke warmly about legacy and impatiently about logistics.
Elena had imagined bringing a baby into their apartment and learning to recognize Julian’s footsteps in the hall.
She pressed her palm against her stomach.
Rachel noticed. “We can obtain records with limited disclosure.”
“I went there to stop treatment.”
No one spoke.
Elena looked at Marianne. “He doesn’t know.”
“That is not relevant to the company investigation,” Marianne said.
“It will become relevant when he decides it is.”
Rachel nodded. “We prepare for that.”
At six thirty, Beatrice returned wearing a gray wool robe over her gown. She had removed the diamond brooch but not the makeup from around her eyes. Without the structure of formal clothing, she looked smaller.
“Julian has gone to the Jefferson Hotel,” she said. “One of the drivers took him. He refused security.”
“Did he take his laptop?” Marianne asked.
“No. His company devices were collected.”
“Personal phone?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone confirm whether he had additional devices?”
Beatrice looked at Thomas.
“He had a leather overnight bag,” Thomas said. “I did not search it.”
Marianne exhaled through her nose. “We should assume he has access to copies.”
Beatrice faced Elena. “How are you?”
The question was too ordinary.
Elena touched the strip on her cheek. “He used my signature.”
Beatrice closed her eyes.
“You knew?” Elena asked.
“No.”
“You suspected?”
“I knew the financing was unstable. I knew he had moved money without proper approval. I did not know he involved you.”
“But you arranged the board vote.”
“Yes.”
“And the security team.”
“Yes.”
“You expected him to become violent.”
Beatrice sat on the edge of the bed. “I expected him to become angry.”
“That is not what I asked.”
The older woman looked toward the window, where the sky had begun to lighten over the wet lawn.
“When Julian was twenty-two,” she said, “he struck a man outside a club in Georgetown.”
Elena felt Rachel stop typing.
“The man required surgery. Julian claimed he had been threatened. There were witnesses who disagreed.”
“What happened?”
“We settled.”
“Of course.”
Beatrice accepted the contempt. “His father said an arrest would destroy his future.”
“So you protected it.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the other man’s future?”
Beatrice’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know.”
The answer entered the room and stayed there.
Elena looked at the woman who had taught her which fork to use at embassy dinners, how to handle offensive donors, and why one never wore black gloves before six in the evening. Beatrice knew the provenance of every portrait at Briarwood. She had kept no memory of the man her son put in a hospital.
“There were other incidents,” Beatrice said. “A driver he shoved. An employee he threatened. Nothing that seemed—”
“Serious?”
Beatrice’s eyes filled but did not spill. “Serious enough. I made them smaller.”
“Why?”
“Because he was my son.”
“That explains it.”
“It doesn’t excuse it.”
May you like
“No.”
Beatrice folded her hands. The gold ring was still on her finger. “When you told me last year that he frightened you, I advised you not to provoke him during difficult periods.”
