Chương 6
“At first.”
“Yes.”
“And the ring?”
“I wanted to give you something that was already yours.”
“Without telling me.”
“I was afraid you’d think—”
“That you had planned all of this?”
He looked at her.
She waited.
He did not deny it.
After he left, Nora locked the door.
Madeline went into the bathroom and vomited.
Not because she had eaten.
Because she had not.
At noon, she called her father.
David Cross answered with, “Thank God.”
Madeline sat on the bathroom floor.
“Do you know Celeste Vale?”
Silence.
Her father said, “Where did you hear that name?”
Madeline closed her eyes.
“Great.”
“Madeline.”
“Did Mom leave jewelry with her?”
Her father breathed out slowly.
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Celeste was your mother’s lawyer for a while.”
“She says they were friends.”
“They were.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Why would I?”
Madeline stared at the grout between the tiles.
“Because she was important enough that Mom left things with her.”
“Your mother made a lot of decisions while she was sick.”
There was something ugly in the sentence.
Not about Joanna.
About David.
Madeline recognized the old tone from childhood: the tone he used when an inconvenient fact could be reduced to somebody else’s emotional state.
“Was there a trust?”
Her father was quiet.
Madeline felt cold.
“Dad.”
“Yes.”
She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.
“What kind?”
“An investment arrangement.”
“With the Coles?”
Another silence.
“Dad.”
“With Adrian’s father’s company.”
“How much?”
“It was complicated.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know what it would be worth now.”
“That’s different from not knowing.”
“Madeline, do not talk to Celeste.”
“Why?”
“She nearly destroyed our family.”
“How?”
“She convinced your mother she needed to protect assets from me.”
Madeline almost laughed.
“Did she?”
“Your mother was dying.”
“She was dying, not stupid.”
“I didn’t say stupid.”
“You meant vulnerable.”
“She was vulnerable.”
“So were you.”
David went quiet.
Madeline immediately regretted it.
Her father had slept in a hospital chair for months. He had learned how to empty drains after Joanna’s surgery because she refused to let a home nurse help. He had once driven forty minutes at midnight because she wanted a particular kind of lemon ice from a grocery store near Stamford.
He had loved her.
He had also controlled every bank account in their marriage.
Both things could be true.
“Did Mom plan to leave you?” Madeline asked.
Her father made a small, irritated sound.
“Who told you that?”
“No one.”
“Then don’t invent history.”
“Did she?”
“She was angry.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She was sick and frightened.”
Madeline stood and walked into the bedroom.
“Did she plan to leave you?”
“Yes.”
The word landed quietly.
Madeline sat on the bed.
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“What would be the point?”
She looked at the pale morning light falling across the floor.
“The point is that it happened.”
“She didn’t leave.”
“She died.”
Her father’s breathing changed.
Madeline regretted that too.
This day seemed to be made of sentences that could not be taken back.
David said, “Celeste encouraged her.”
“To leave?”
“To distrust me.”
“Was she wrong?”
A long silence.
“I don’t know anymore.”
It was the first honest thing he had said.
Madeline cried after they hung up, but not for Adrian.
Not entirely.
She cried because the dead had changed shape.
For thirteen years, Joanna Cross had been frozen in the final version of herself: sick, thin, joking badly about hospital food, worried about Madeline’s chemistry grade.
Now there had been another Joanna.
A woman talking to lawyers.
A woman moving jewelry.
A woman preparing to leave her husband.
A woman planning something for her daughter’s thirtieth birthday.
Madeline felt betrayed by a person who had been dead since George W. Bush was president and then felt ashamed for feeling betrayed at all.
At three that afternoon, an attorney named Melissa Grant called.
She represented Celeste.
Her tone was polite and unhurried.
“Ms. Cross, Ms. Vale authorized me to provide copies of documents in which you are a named beneficiary or intended recipient. I want to be clear that I am not your attorney.”
“I understand.”
“I also want to be clear that some of these documents may be disputed.”
“By whom?”
“Your father. Possibly Mr. Cole. Potentially Cole Mercer Holdings.”
Madeline stared at her desk.
“So everyone.”
Melissa almost laughed.
“Not everyone.”
The documents arrived through a secure link.
Madeline did not open them immediately.
She made toast.
It burned.
She scraped the black part into the sink with a butter knife and ate the middle anyway.
Nora, still there, watched without speaking.
Then they opened the files.
There was no single page that explained Madeline’s life.
That was almost a relief.
There were emails, scanned letters, account statements, a custodial agreement, and a purchase receipt from a jeweler on Madison Avenue dated twenty-seven years earlier.
Item: platinum and diamond ring.
Purchaser: Joanna Cross.
Interior engraving requested: JOANNA CROSS.
Madeline touched the screen.
Her mother had bought it two years after marrying David.
There was also a letter.
Celeste—
If she ever gets married because she thinks being chosen is the same as choosing, please hit her with something heavy.
Madeline laughed unexpectedly.
Nora leaned toward the laptop.
“That is absolutely your mother.”
Madeline kept reading.
I’m serious about thirty. David thinks eighteen because everything has to be a legal number with him. Eighteen is absurd. At eighteen I still thought brie was sophisticated.
Nora covered her mouth.
Madeline smiled through tears.
May you like
The rest of the letter was less funny.
Joanna wrote that the ring was not to be treated as an inheritance of value. If Madeline wanted to sell it, sell it. If she hated it, melt it down. If she wore it, it should be because she liked it, not because her mother had turned jewelry into a command from beyond the grave.
