Chương 4
He put his phone away.
“Tell me about the accident.”
Maria sat.
“He left the hospital around eleven thirty. He called me from the garage.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he'd made a terrible mistake.”
Claire leaned against the desk.
Maria continued.
“He told me if anything happened, I should keep the locket.”
“Did he say why?”
“No.”
“Anything about Briarwood?”
“Yes.”
Nathan waited.
“He said they had used the wrong embryo.”
Claire made a small sound.
Maria looked at her.
“I thought you knew.”
“I knew he was worried about the number. He never told me that.”
“He told me.”
Nathan asked, “What else?”
Maria looked toward the door.
“He said the embryo wasn't yours.”
Nathan's face tightened.
“Whose?”
“He didn't know.”
“And then?”
“He said he was going back to Briarwood the next morning.”
“But he died.”
Maria nodded.
“A truck ran a red light on the FDR.”
Nathan took a breath.
“Was the driver charged?”
“Yes. Reckless driving. He had alcohol in his system.”
“So Daniel's death wasn't connected.”
“I never said it was.”
Nathan almost asked whether she believed that.
Then he stopped himself.
This wasn't a thriller.
People died stupidly every day. A drunk driver could destroy a family without being hired by anyone.
“What happened to Dr. Halden?”
Maria's eyes shifted.
“That is the part Claire doesn't know.”
Claire straightened.
“What?”
“Daniel wasn't only helping you.”
Maria rubbed the folded paper between her fingers.
“He'd been working at Briarwood.”
Claire stared.
“He told me he knew Halden socially.”
“He lied.”
“Doing what?”
“IT contracting. Database migration.”
Nathan felt the first solid piece of ground beneath the chaos.
“What kind of data?”
“Patient records.”
“And he accessed them.”
Maria nodded.
“He found discrepancies.”
“How many?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he report them?”
“He was going to.”
“To whom?”
“I don't know.”
Claire sat down again.
Nathan asked, “Why did your father pay him to disappear?”
Maria looked at Claire.
Claire answered.
“Because Dad found out Daniel had helped me.”
“That still doesn't explain it.”
“My father believed Daniel had put our family at legal risk.”
“He had.”
“Yes.”
“What did Robert do?”
“He gave Daniel two hundred thousand dollars.”
Nathan stared at her.
“To keep quiet?”
“To leave New York and never contact me.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“Obviously.”
“He returned when he discovered the records.”
Maria folded the paper again.
Nathan said, “I want everything you have from Daniel.”
“I don't have anything else.”
“Emails?”
“Old account. Gone.”
“Computer?”
“Police returned it after the accident. It was damaged.”
“Phone?”
“Same.”
“Documents?”
Maria shook her head.
Nathan looked at the letters.
“BWM.”
Claire whispered, “Briarwood Medical?”
“Maybe.”
Nathan searched the six-digit number on his phone.
Nothing useful.
Then Maria said, “Wait.”
She took the paper.
She stared at the number.
“That isn't six digits.”
Nathan looked.
“It's two sets of three.”
“So?”
Maria turned the paper sideways.
“Daniel used to write dates backward.”
Claire looked at her.
“He did?”
“When we were kids. I don't know why. He thought it was funny.”
Maria separated the numbers.
04 11 20.
Claire frowned.
“That doesn't make sense. Lily was born in 2020.”
Maria shook her head.
“Backward.”
02 11 40.
Nathan almost dismissed it.
Then Claire whispered, “November fourth, 2002.”
Maria looked at her.
“What happened then?”
Claire had gone pale.
“My mother had a baby.”
Nathan stared.
“You said you were an only child.”
“I was sixteen. My mother was pregnant. The baby died.”
“A boy?”
Claire nodded.
“She never let us talk about him.”
Nathan looked at the paper.
BWM.
November 4, 2002.
“What was his name?”
“Benjamin.”
“Benjamin what?”
“Vale.”
Maria whispered, “B.V.”
Nathan stared at the letters again.
“Maybe we're reading them wrong.”
Claire took the paper.
She turned it toward the light.
The final letter was not an M.
It was a V written in Daniel's cramped hand.
B.W.V.
Claire's fingers began shaking.
“Benjamin William Vale.”
Nobody spoke.
Nathan felt the truth approaching before any of them understood its shape.
“What does your dead infant brother have to do with Briarwood?”
Claire looked at Maria.
Maria shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Nathan did.
Or at least he knew where to begin.
“Your father.”
Claire stared at him.
“What about him?”
“He didn't pay Daniel because Daniel helped you get pregnant.”
Nathan picked up his phone.
“He paid Daniel because Daniel discovered something Robert Vale needed buried.”
The auction continued without them.
That fact offended Nathan at first.
When they returned to the gallery twenty minutes later, a landscape was being sold for $310,000. People lifted bidding paddles. The auctioneer smiled. A waiter replaced empty glasses.
Nathan had experienced the private arrogance of grief before, the strange conviction that the world should notice when yours had changed.
It never did.
Lily ran toward him.
“Did you solve it?”
Nathan crouched.
He looked at her face.
Six years of bedtime stories and scraped knees and Sunday pancakes existed inside that face.
Biology could not remove them.
But fear could contaminate almost anything if you let it.
He opened his arms.
Lily hugged him.
Nathan held her longer than usual.
She pulled back.
“You're squishing me.”
“Sorry.”
“Is Uncle Daniel bad?”
“No.”
“Was Mommy bad?”
Claire went still.
Nathan looked at her.
There were a dozen answers available.
Most were easier.
“Mom made a mistake.”
Lily looked at Claire.
“What kind?”
“An adult one.”
“Those are usually worse.”
Maria covered her mouth.
Nathan almost smiled.
“Yeah,” he said. “They usually are.”
They left the museum before the auction ended.
In the car, Lily fell asleep against Claire within ten minutes.
Nathan sat on the opposite side of the back seat.
He could not stop looking at his daughter.
At a red light, Claire whispered, “Say something.”
Nathan looked out the window.
“I don't have anything safe to say.”
“I can take it.”
“I'm not worried about you.”
Claire turned toward the sleeping child.
That landed.
May you like
Nathan immediately regretted it.
Not because it was untrue.
