Part 7
“I signed forms. Adrian gave them to me.”
Dana’s mouth tightened. “We will obtain copies. For now, document what you remember in your own words. Do not exaggerate. Do not minimize.”
Elena looked at Victoria.
“This is what he meant,” she said.
“When?”
“Last night. He said I had no idea what he could prove.”
The safe location was a furnished apartment above a bookstore forty miles inland. It belonged to a retired public defender Dana trusted. The rooms were clean and slightly crooked. A row of ceramic birds stood on the kitchen windowsill. None matched.
Victoria carried in two grocery bags. Elena carried the pharmacy bag and her folder.
“You can leave them there,” Elena said.
Victoria set the groceries on the counter.
There was no staff. No driver waiting downstairs. No one to bring fresh towels or replace a broken lightbulb before it was noticed. The refrigerator hummed loudly, and the faucet dripped.
Elena opened one cabinet and found three coffee mugs, all advertising local plumbing companies.
“This one says ‘We Handle What You Can’t,’” she said.
Victoria looked at it.
Elena let out a brief laugh. It startled both of them.
Victoria sat at the small table.
“Dana told me you may stay for an hour,” Elena said.
“She is formidable.”
“She thinks you’re dangerous.”
“She is correct.”
Elena took the least ugly mug from the cabinet and filled it with tap water.
“Why did you hit him?”
The question had been waiting since the salon.
Victoria folded her hands.
“Because he deserved it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
Elena sat across from her.
Victoria looked past her at the ceramic birds. One had only half a beak.
“I saw him sitting there,” she said. “I saw you on the floor. I saw Celeste’s hand on your shawl. And he looked bored.”
“He was angry.”
“He looked bored.”
“That’s how he looks when he’s angriest.”
Victoria absorbed that.
“I hit him because I wanted to hurt him,” she said. “Not badly. Enough to make him feel something immediate. It was an impulse, and it was wrong.”
Elena watched her.
“You said it was for watching.”
“It was.”
“But it was also for you.”
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to matter.
Victoria looked down at the black polish on her shoes, still marked with dust from the estate drive.
“I had spent years believing I could control the kind of man he became by controlling the consequences around him. Last night, I saw what that had produced. Then I did another controlling thing.”
“You hit him.”
“Yes.”
“Are you sorry?”
Victoria considered the question carefully.
“I am sorry I made violence the clearest thing anyone could prove happened in that room.”
Elena’s fingers tightened around the mug.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No. I am not sorry he felt it.”
The refrigerator motor stopped, leaving the apartment suddenly quiet.
Elena looked toward the window.
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“It is.”
“It’s the first honest one you’ve given me without editing it.”
Victoria accepted that too.
Before she left, Elena handed her a list written on the back of a grocery receipt.
Passport. Birth certificate. Conservatory box. Blue coat. Medication from bathroom cabinet. Piano scores in bench. Grandmother’s ring.
Victoria read it twice.
“Do you want me to retrieve these?”
“I want you to ask Dana how.”
“All right.”
“And I want you to send me the settlement agreement with June Mercer.”
Victoria looked up.
“The whole thing,” Elena said. “No summary.”
“It is confidential.”
“So was my marriage.”
Victoria folded the receipt and put it into her handbag.
“I will ask my attorney what I am legally allowed to provide.”
Elena’s expression cooled.
Victoria added, “And if I am not allowed, I will tell you exactly why.”
The old answer would have been a promise to handle it. The new one felt inadequate, which was perhaps why it was safer.
The next morning, Victoria met her personal attorney in a bakery near the courthouse. Nora Feld had represented her through her husband’s estate and one vicious dispute over voting shares. She was seventy-two, wore bright red glasses, and had never once called Victoria “Mrs. Vale.”
“You slapped him?” Nora asked.
“Yes.”
“Open hand?”
“Yes.”
“In front of witnesses?”
“Yes.”
“Any chance you were wearing a ring?”
“No.”
Nora broke a croissant in half. “Well. At least the diamonds were in your ears.”
Victoria did not smile.
Nora’s humor disappeared. “You cannot control this investigation. You cannot speak for Elena. You cannot threaten the board. You cannot order anyone to give you records they would not give another witness.”
“I know.”
“You know sentences. I am talking about behavior.”
Victoria looked through the bakery window. A delivery cyclist locked his bike to a parking sign and pulled a crushed muffin from his backpack.
“I need June Mercer’s settlement file.”
“You need it for what?”
“Elena asked to see it.”
Nora sat back.
“Does Elena know?”
“I told her last night.”
“All of it?”
“No. I do not remember all of it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Victoria looked at her.
Nora sighed. “There is a confidentiality clause. June can waive it. The company cannot unilaterally hand Elena the agreement.”
“Can I contact June?”
“Not directly. I can contact her attorney, if he still represents her.”
“Do it.”
“Why?”
“Because Elena asked.”
Nora studied her for several seconds.
“Be careful not to turn confession into another way of making yourself central.”
Victoria reached for her coffee. It had gone cold.
At the estate, Richard supervised the retrieval of Elena’s belongings. Dana attended by video call. Mara and another employee packed each requested item while a security officer recorded the process.
The passport was not in the bedroom safe.
Adrian said Elena had moved it.
Elena said she had never possessed the combination.
May you like
Celeste said she remembered seeing the passport in a desk drawer weeks earlier. The drawer was empty.
The medication was found in Celeste’s office beside a folder of household receipts.
