Chương 9
Richard read three.
Then four.
By the fifth, he put the paper down.
“I can’t.”
Claire nodded.
Nobody spoke for a while.
Finally Richard said, “She thought I answered the first one.”
“Yes.”
“Vanessa wrote back using my assistant’s office address.”
“Yes.”
“How did she get access?”
“Rebecca never figured that out.”
Richard did.
“My father.”
Claire looked at him.
Richard stood.
“My father gave Vanessa access to everything when I was in London. Calendar, mail, executive office, even the apartment.”
“You think he knew?”
“I don’t know.”
That was not entirely true.
His face suggested he suspected.
Claire took out another document.
“This is the part you won’t like.”
Richard gave a tired laugh.
“That implies there was a part I did.”
Claire handed him a copy of an email.
Richard read.
His expression changed.
Elena watched.
“What?”
He passed the page to her.
The message had been sent by Rebecca four years after Lily’s birth.
Richard,
I know now that at least some of what I believed was wrong. Michael told me you looked for me. I don’t know what Vanessa told you or what you knew. I have a daughter. Her name is Lily.
I am not asking for money. I am not asking you to leave your wife. I don’t even know if I want you in our lives.
But I need to know whether you want the truth.
Rebecca
Elena looked at the date.
Then at Richard.
“What happened?”
“I never saw this.”
Claire produced a second page.
A reply.
Rebecca,
Do not contact me again.
Whatever choices you made are yours to live with. I have a family and a life that I will not allow you to disrupt.
Richard
He stared.
“I didn’t write that.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Rebecca eventually had someone look at the email headers.”
Richard looked at Claire sharply.
“She knew?”
“Two years later.”
“And still didn’t tell me?”
Claire’s face hardened.
“She was sick by then.”
Richard sat.
The anger went out of him.
“What?”
“Not leukemia yet. Other things. Fatigue. Infections. Doctors. Bills. She spent a year being told it was stress.”
Claire looked down at her hands.
“Then they found it.”
Richard’s face had gone gray.
“How long?”
“Eighteen months.”
“And she never contacted me.”
“She wrote one more letter.”
Claire reached into the box.
Richard did not take it.
“What did it say?”
Claire’s voice softened.
“She said if she survived, she would tell you herself.”
Richard stared at her.
“And if she didn’t?”
“She asked me to decide what was best for Lily.”
Silence filled the office.
Richard looked toward the box.
“She trusted you.”
“Yes.”
“And you sent Lily here.”
“No.”
He looked up.
Claire sighed.
“We’re back to that.”
She pulled out her phone.
“I asked the emergency family coordinator to place Lily with the Barrons in Rye. They have two girls near her age. Rebecca knew them from school.”
“Then how did she end up here?”
Claire opened an email.
“Someone changed the placement authorization.”
“Who?”
“The coordinator says she received a call from a donor liaison associated with the Hale Family Foundation offering temporary accommodation in your staff residence.”
Richard’s face hardened.
“Name?”
“No name in the file. Just a phone number.”
“Do you have it?”
Claire looked at him.
“I knew you’d ask that.”
She slid the phone across the desk.
Richard wrote the number down.
He did not call it.
Instead, he sent it to Mark Ellison.
Mark responded eleven minutes later.
The number belonged to a prepaid mobile account.
That might have ended the trail.
It did not.
The coordinator had also received a follow-up email from an address using the Hale Foundation domain.
The account belonged to Vanessa’s personal assistant.
The assistant, Maribel Soto, had resigned that morning.
Richard stared at the email.
Claire said, “You think she’ll talk?”
“I don’t know.”
“She may be scared.”
“She should be.”
Claire’s face sharpened.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Sound like your father.”
Richard stopped.
Elena saw the hit land.
Claire leaned back.
“If Maribel helped Vanessa, she may have done it because Vanessa had power over her job. She may have done it willingly. We don’t know.”
Richard nodded slowly.
“You’re right.”
Claire seemed mildly surprised.
“That was easier than I expected.”
“I’m tired.”
“Maybe you should stay tired.”
Richard almost smiled.
Maribel did talk.
Not to Richard.
To her own attorney.
Then, through attorneys, she provided a statement and copies of messages she had kept because she had been frightened Vanessa would blame her if the plan failed.
The plan, as Maribel described it, was not initially to send Lily away forever.
Vanessa had discovered Rebecca’s death months earlier while reviewing charitable medical-assistance records connected indirectly to a cancer support nonprofit. Rebecca’s name appeared in a donor report.
Vanessa searched further.
She found an obituary.
Then she found Lily.
She also discovered Claire was the guardian.
For months, Vanessa did nothing.
Or told herself she did nothing.
Then Claire’s accident created an opportunity.
Vanessa used her foundation connections to influence Lily’s temporary placement.
She wanted the child close enough to confirm whether Rebecca had left evidence.
She instructed Maribel to search Lily’s belongings discreetly.
Maribel refused.
Vanessa searched them herself.
She found the teddy bear.
That was when panic replaced calculation.
Vanessa recognized it.
Richard had bought the bear during a trip Vanessa remembered because he had returned from Nantucket wearing the same blue ribbon around his wrist as a joke.
Vanessa knew he would recognize it too.
Richard was due home in two days.
Vanessa tried to move Lily to another placement.
The coordinator resisted.
On the morning Richard returned, Vanessa intended to send Lily away with Elena before anyone could stop her.
Then she lost her temper.
She grabbed the bear.
Richard heard the truth.
The entire plan collapsed in less than thirty seconds.
May you like
When Richard finished reading Maribel’s statement, he sat alone in his office.
Elena found him there after dinner.
