Chương 3
Naomi approached.
“The caterer will continue service,” she said. “They would like written confirmation regarding Monday’s payment.”
“Give it to them.”
“From whom?”
Victoria looked at the room she supposedly owned.
For most of her life, Hale House had seemed incapable of belonging to anyone. It had six chimneys, twenty-three bedrooms, a library with a hidden service door, and plumbing that produced brown water every October for reasons no contractor had ever adequately explained. Her mother had called it a beautiful animal with chronic illnesses. Charles had called it an asset. Evan had called it an opportunity.
Victoria looked at Naomi.
“From me.”
Naomi nodded once. “There are also three reporters outside.”
“How?”
“One of the guests called them.”
“Which guest?”
“I can find out.”
“No. Don’t waste your time.”
Charles said, “We need a statement.”
Victoria turned toward him. “We need financial records.”
“We need both.”
“You can make the statement. Tell them the gala is continuing and the board will meet tomorrow.”
“And the allegations?”
“Say nothing.”
“He’ll fill the silence.”
“He always does.”
Charles studied her. “You think silence still protects you?”
“No,” she said. “I think talking before I know what he has done protects him.”
She signed the caterer’s payment guarantee in Naomi’s leather folder. Her signature looked steady. That irritated her. She wanted one visible thing to reflect what was happening inside her, but her handwriting had always been more disciplined than she was.
Naomi closed the folder.
“Your room is ready,” she said.
Victoria looked toward the upper gallery.
“I’m not staying here.”
“The roads are freezing.”
“I have a hotel.”
“The hotel canceled your reservation.”
Victoria stared at her.
Naomi’s expression remained neutral. “The card on file was declined.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It was a foundation card.”
Victoria felt heat rise beneath her necklace.
Evan had canceled it.
Not after the announcement. He could not have done it that quickly. He had canceled it before she arrived.
He had known she was coming.
Charles read the conclusion on her face.
“He received notice,” he said.
Victoria looked toward the corridor where Evan had disappeared.
“Yes,” she said. “He did.”
Her childhood bedroom was unchanged in the ways that made it feel most unfamiliar. The wallpaper had been replaced with a pale gray silk. The old iron bed was gone. A larger upholstered bed stood beneath the windows, dressed in white linen too smooth to have been slept in. Someone had removed the shelves where she once kept mystery novels, horse-show ribbons, and a cracked ceramic fox she had refused to throw away.
Only the window seat remained.
Victoria sat there after midnight wearing a robe Naomi had found in the guest linen closet. Her gown hung from the wardrobe door. The teardrop necklace lay on the bedside table beside a glass of water she had not touched.
Below, vans collected lighting equipment from the courtyard. Men in black shirts rolled cables through the service entrance. Their voices rose occasionally, ordinary and irritated.
The gala had ended without another public scene. Charles gave a brief statement. The foundation exceeded its fundraising goal, though no one knew how many pledges would be withdrawn by morning.
Victoria had spent two hours speaking with donors who wanted reassurance without facts. They asked whether the programs were safe, whether Charles was ill, whether Evan had stolen money, whether she intended to sell the estate, whether Lauren had known.
She had answered the same way each time.
“The board meets tomorrow.”
At eleven, a woman Victoria had not recognized approached and said her son had received emergency rental assistance from the foundation after a factory closed. She clasped Victoria’s hand and said, “Please don’t let them ruin it.”
Victoria had not asked who “them” meant.
Her phone showed twenty-seven missed calls, most from numbers she did not know. A clip of Lauren ordering her to leave had already passed two million views. Someone had added dramatic music. Someone else had slowed Evan’s reaction to Charles’s announcement and placed red circles around his eyes.
The internet had decided, within an hour, that Victoria was either a wronged heiress returning for justice or a vindictive daughter staging a coup against a respected charity executive.
Neither version knew she had eaten half a dinner roll behind the podium because she had forgotten lunch.
A knock came at the door.
“It’s open.”
Charles entered carrying two mugs.
“I don’t drink chamomile,” Victoria said.
“It’s coffee.”
“It’s midnight.”
“You used to drink coffee at midnight.”
“I was twenty-two.”
“You said sleep was an inefficient use of time.”
“I also owned a pair of leather pants.”
He handed her a mug. “I remember.”
She took it despite herself. It was weak and too sweet.
“You still make terrible coffee.”
“The machine made it.”
“You chose the buttons.”
Charles sat in the chair opposite the window seat. For a while, they listened to the vans below.
Victoria blew across the surface of the coffee.
“When did you know?”
Charles folded his hands. “Know is a generous word.”
“When did you suspect?”
“Last March.”
“Eight months ago.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
He looked at the mug in his hands. “Evan brought me documents to sign regarding the foundation’s line of credit. One page referred to the transfer agreement you signed during the divorce.”
“I never signed a transfer agreement.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
“I believed you might have signed something without telling me.”
“Because I was unstable.”
He looked up. “Because you refused to speak to me.”
“That made forgery more likely than privacy?”
“No.”
“But it made it easier.”
Charles set his coffee on the floor.
“You signed dozens of documents when you left,” he said. “You told Miriam you wanted no involvement with the estate or the foundation.”
“I said I wanted no operational role while Evan and I were divorcing. That is not the same as giving him everything.”
“I understand that now.”
May you like
“No. You understand the paperwork now.”
The old silence between them entered the room with practiced ease. Charles had always used silence as if it were a sign of restraint. Victoria had learned that silence could also be a wall a person built while waiting for someone else to tire.
