Chương 10
Griffin drove there without a security convoy.
Adrian lived in a small house with a sagging porch and a view of the water. He had once worn custom suits and controlled every minute of Griffin’s life. Now he opened the door in a flannel shirt stained with varnish.
“You look like Conrad,” Adrian said.
“I came for information, not an injury.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come to an old employee.”
They sat in a kitchen crowded with radio parts. A clock ticked too loudly above the sink.
Griffin placed a copy of the laboratory report on the table.
Adrian did not touch it.
“Hazel and Iris,” Griffin said. “They are eight.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
The reaction answered the first question.
“You knew Sloan was pregnant.”
“I knew she said she was.”
“Did you meet her in the lobby?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Martin Voss from legal.”
“On whose instruction?”
Adrian looked toward the window.
“Conrad’s?”
“Your father instructed legal to prevent an extortion attempt.”
“She wasn’t extorting anyone.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
Adrian rubbed his thumb along a varnish stain. “I suspected.”
“Did you tell me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You were three votes from losing the company. You had not slept. You had ordered me to block personal contact.”
“I did not order you to hide a pregnancy.”
“No. You used broader language.”
The truth was worse for being precise.
Griffin leaned back. The kitchen chair creaked beneath him.
“What happened to the messages?”
“Some were logged. Some were not.”
“And the letter she sent?”
Adrian’s gaze shifted.
“What letter?” Griffin asked.
Adrian stood, went to a narrow desk, and opened the bottom drawer. He returned with a clear plastic sleeve containing an envelope.
Sloan’s handwriting crossed the front.
GRIFFIN—PERSONAL.
The envelope had been opened.
Inside were four pages and a grainy ultrasound image showing two pale shapes.
Griffin did not reach for it immediately.
“You kept this?”
“I found it in a box after I retired.”
“You opened it then?”
Adrian shook his head. “Legal opened it when it arrived.”
“Why was it not given to me?”
“Conrad said the claim lacked verification.”
“It was a letter.”
“It was evidence to him.”
“And to you?”
“A problem I did not want to become mine.”
Griffin picked up the ultrasound image.
Two circles had been marked in pen.
Baby A.
Baby B.
Sloan’s letter began without greeting.
I have tried to reach you in every reasonable way. I am pregnant. There are two babies. I am not asking you for money, and I will not discuss this through your father’s lawyers.
Griffin stopped reading.
His vision narrowed until the page became a white field beneath his hands.
“Did my father respond?”
“Legal sent a letter.”
“The threat.”
“Yes.”
“Did Sloan answer?”
“No.”
“Did anyone check on her?”
“No.”
“Did I ever ask whether she had contacted me?”
Adrian looked at him with something almost like pity. “Once.”
“When?”
“About two months later. You asked whether there had been any personal messages during the proxy fight.”
“What did you say?”
“That nothing required your attention.”
Griffin’s fingers tightened around the plastic sleeve.
Adrian remained seated.
“You could have told me now,” Griffin said.
“I spent nine years telling myself it was not my secret.”
“It wasn’t.”
“No. It was my cowardice.”
Griffin looked around the modest kitchen, at the repaired radios and the clean dish towel folded beside the sink.
“What do you want me to do with that?”
“Nothing.”
“You expect forgiveness?”
“No.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because you came here looking for one person to blame.”
Griffin stood.
Adrian did not move.
“You were twenty-nine,” he said. “Old enough to know that ordering people to remove distractions turns human beings into debris. Conrad made the decision. Martin delivered the threat. I hid the letter. But you built the system that made all of us useful to you.”
Griffin wanted to strike the table, shout, reject the moral arithmetic.
Instead, he took the envelope.
Outside, gulls fought over something near the road. A ferry moved across the gray water. Griffin stood beside his car and read the entire letter.
Sloan had written that she was frightened. She had written that she still loved him and hated herself for it. She had written that if he did not respond by the end of the month, she would assume his silence was his answer and raise the children without him.
At the bottom, beneath her name, she had added one sentence.
I need you to choose whether you are absent, not let other men choose it for you.
He had chosen.
He simply had not known the full cost of the choice.
Griffin returned to Seattle after dark.
He did not go to Sloan’s penthouse. He called first.
“I found your letter.”
The silence stretched.
“Where?”
“Adrian Mercer kept it.”
“He kept it?”
“He found it after he retired. Legal opened it. My father ordered the response.”
Sloan’s breathing changed.
“I have the ultrasound picture,” he said.
She sat at the edge of her bed. Hazel and Iris were asleep in the next room.
“I thought they destroyed it.”
“They should have given it to me.”
“Yes.”
“I should have made sure nothing was hidden.”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes. “You were right.”
“I know.”
The answer was not gracious. It was honest.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Sloan pressed her hand against her forehead.
Apologies had once been things she imagined receiving. In those fantasies, the right words unlocked some frozen part of her, and grief left cleanly through tears.
Instead, she felt tired and vaguely angry that his apology had arrived with evidence, as though her memory had required authentication.
“I don’t know what to do with that tonight,” she said.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“What will you do?”
“Confront my father.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“This isn’t about winning.”
May you like
“It will become about winning when he refuses to be ashamed.”
Griffin looked at the envelope on his desk. “What would you have me do?”
