Chương 3
That tiny refusal nearly broke her.
By the time the ship docked, the first video was already online.
Victoria did not know until her business partner called while she and Sophie were in the back seat of a rideshare heading north.
Naomi Chen did not say hello.
“Tell me you did not slap Margaret Reed on a boat full of donors.”
Victoria looked at Sophie, who was tracing shapes in the fogged window with one fingertip.
“I’m with Sophie.”
Naomi went silent.
Then, much more quietly, “Oh.”
“Yes.”
“Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“That one I assumed.”
Victoria leaned her head against the seat.
“How bad?”
“Three angles so far.”
“Three?”
“One is mostly the back of a bald man’s head, so technically two and a half.”
Despite herself, Victoria smiled.
Naomi continued, “You’re trending locally. Reed Meridian is being tagged. Somebody identified you from the Lakeshore Hotel project.”
“Of course they did.”
“And there’s a slowed-down version.”
“Why?”
“Because civilization was a mistake.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
Sophie whispered, “Can I have your phone?”
“No.”
“For games.”
“Not tonight.”
Sophie made a disappointed sound and returned to the window.
Naomi lowered her voice again.
“What happened?”
“I found him.”
“Alexander?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Victoria looked at her daughter.
“He saw her.”
Naomi inhaled.
She knew enough not to ask the next question.
“I’m coming over.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Naomi.”
“You slapped a sixty-year-old heiress in formalwear while carrying a DNA report. You do not get to decide you’re low-maintenance tonight.”
“She’s fifty-eight.”
“Oh, excellent. That improves everything.”
Victoria almost laughed again.
Naomi arrived forty minutes later carrying two grocery bags, although she lived close enough to know Victoria had food.
One bag contained milk, cereal, bananas, crackers, peanut butter, and frozen waffles.
The other contained wine.
Victoria looked inside.
“You think we’re expecting weather?”
“I panic-shop.”
“You bought three kinds of crackers.”
“I didn’t know what level of cracker the situation required.”
Sophie was already upstairs changing into pajamas.
Naomi took off her coat and set her phone facedown on the kitchen counter.
Victoria noticed.
“How many views?”
“Don’t.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
“Naomi.”
“Four hundred thousand on the biggest upload.”
Victoria gripped the counter.
“That was an hour ago.”
“I know.”
“Is Sophie visible?”
Naomi’s face changed.
“Yes.”
Victoria turned away.
In one of the videos, Sophie could be seen from the side for perhaps four seconds. A silver tiara. Light-brown hair. Small face tilted toward Alexander.
Four seconds was enough.
Victoria had spent seven years protecting her daughter’s ordinary life.
It had taken Victoria less than seven seconds to expose it.
“I screwed up.”
Naomi did not offer reassurance.
“Yeah.”
Victoria looked at her.
Naomi crossed her arms.
“You want me to tell you the slap was iconic? The internet has that covered. You brought Sophie into a room where you knew there might be a confrontation.”
“I didn’t know he would be there.”
“You knew Margaret would.”
“I tried private.”
“I know.”
“She ignored two letters from my attorney.”
“I know.”
“She had Beth threatened with litigation.”
“I know.”
“I thought if I confronted her where she couldn’t bury it—”
“You thought like somebody who had been angry for seven years.”
Victoria stared at the dark kitchen window.
Naomi’s voice softened.
“That doesn’t mean you’re wrong about what she did.”
“I put Sophie in the middle.”
“Yes.”
Upstairs, something fell.
Both women froze.
Then Sophie called, “I’m okay!”
Naomi closed her eyes.
“That child is terrifying.”
Victoria went upstairs.
Sophie had knocked over a container of hair clips while searching for the stuffed rabbit she had not slept with consistently for almost a year.
Victoria found it beneath the bed.
Sophie took it without comment.
“Brush teeth.”
“I already did.”
“You were upstairs for four minutes.”
“I’m fast.”
“You are a liar.”
Sophie sighed and headed for the bathroom.
Ordinary irritation felt miraculous.
Victoria sat on the edge of the bed.
The silver handbag lay beside the discarded ice-blue dress.
She picked it up.
Inside were the hospital bracelet, the DNA report, and the letter.
Eighteen days earlier, that letter had arrived in a plain FedEx envelope at Victoria’s office.
No return name.
No explanation.
Just a note with a phone number.
I should have done this years ago. I am sorry.
Beth Moreno answered on the second ring.
Victoria had known the name.
Anyone who spent time around Alexander in those years knew Beth. She had been his father’s executive assistant before becoming the family office administrator, a short woman with silvering black hair who remembered birthdays and could tell from across a room when someone needed an aspirin.
They met the next morning at a bakery in Evanston.
Beth did not order food.
She placed a document sleeve on the table.
“I found this in a personal file that was transferred out of storage after Mr. Reed died.”
Victoria stared at the handwriting.
Her handwriting.
Almost.
The slant was wrong.
The capital V was wrong.
The loop in the H was something she had stopped doing in high school.
Alexander,
By the time you read this, I will be gone. The pregnancy is real, but the child is not yours. I let you believe what you wanted because I was afraid of losing you before I was ready to leave. I do not want you involved in my life anymore. Please don’t call me, don’t look for me, and don’t make this uglier than it already is.
I’m sorry for what I did.
Victoria.
Victoria had read it three times.
Then she walked to the restroom and vomited.
When she returned, Beth was crying without making noise.
“Where did you get this?”
“Alexander kept it.”
The bakery around them continued with the small, indifferent activity of morning. Milk steamed. A toddler dropped a spoon. Someone at the next table argued on the phone about parking.
Victoria sat down.
May you like
“He kept it?”
“It was in a file marked personal. Margaret asked me to move several boxes when Alexander changed offices. That was years ago. I never opened it then. After his father passed, the family began consolidating old storage. I was retiring. I found it.”
