Chương 8
Naomi closed her tablet.
“I’ll wait outside.”
Elias remained.
Clara looked at him. “You too.”
“I want to understand what happened.”
“No. You want to understand what can be proved.”
“Those are related.”
“They are not the same.”
Diane collected the untouched soup tray and moved it to the counter.
Elias lowered his voice. “Julian’s attorney is suggesting you provoked him. We need to anticipate how your actions will be characterized.”
“My actions?”
“I am not blaming you.”
“You’re preparing to explain me.”
“I am preparing to defend you.”
“Against whom?”
“Against people who will exploit every inconsistency.”
“Then let me be inconsistent.”
His face tightened.
“That is not how testimony works.”
“I’m not testifying right now. I’m lying in a hospital with half my face purple while you stand there trying to turn me into a reliable version of myself.”
“I’m trying to prevent them from turning you into an unreliable one.”
Clara pushed the blanket away with her good hand.
Pain stopped her before she could sit upright.
Diane moved toward the bed, but Clara shook her head.
“Julian didn’t become dangerous yesterday,” she said. “He grabbed me once in New York.”
Elias went still.
“When?”
“January.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I stayed with him.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer.”
“What happened?”
“We argued outside a restaurant. He held my arm too hard. He apologized. I believed him.”
“Was anyone there?”
Clara laughed once without humor.
“There. You did it again.”
“What?”
“You looked for a witness before you looked at me.”
Elias opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Diane sat on the foot of the bed.
Clara turned her face toward the window.
“I didn’t tell you because you would have taken my mistake away from me,” she said. “You would have called him, called his father, called someone at the club, changed the wedding, moved money, hired security. Everything would have happened around me. And then I would have had to live inside whatever solution you created.”
“I would have helped.”
“You would have decided.”
He looked older than he had in the courtyard.
The silence continued until he nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Clara’s eye closed.
It was not enough. It was not nothing.
Elias left the room.
In the hallway, he passed Naomi without stopping. He walked to the end of the corridor, where a vending machine hummed beside a window overlooking the ambulance entrance.
He bought coffee and received a paper cup filled with something gray.
A maintenance worker stood nearby trying to open a jammed compartment in the machine. He struck the side twice with his palm.
“Don’t,” Elias said.
The worker looked at him.
Elias stared at the machine.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were going to hurt it.”
The worker gave him a careful nod and returned to his work.
Elias sat in a plastic chair and drank the coffee.
Twenty years earlier, Clara had fallen from a pony and broken her collarbone. Elias had been in the middle of a murder trial. He arrived at the emergency room after Diane had signed every form, spoken to every doctor, and calmed their daughter.
He had bought Clara a better helmet.
At the time, he had considered that useful.
By the fifth day, the story had divided into competing versions.
In one version, Julian Mercer was a violent heir who had attacked his fiancée because she discovered financial fraud.
In another, Clara had confronted him with false accusations, humiliated him in front of servants, and triggered a breakdown.
A gossip site published photographs from their engagement party, including one in which Julian appeared to grip Clara’s waist while she leaned away. Commenters debated whether her expression showed discomfort or laughter.
Someone leaked that Elias’s signature appeared on the land agreement.
The leak changed everything.
Reporters shifted from the hospital to the courthouse archives. Old articles about Elias’s judicial career resurfaced. A decade-old controversy involving a guardianship case appeared on television. Elias had approved the appointment of a private fiduciary later accused of mismanaging an elderly woman’s estate. The fiduciary had been recommended by Martin Sloane.
Elias had not been charged with misconduct. The judicial review board concluded that he relied on incomplete disclosures. At the time, Martin blamed an associate and repaid part of the missing funds through his firm’s insurer.
Now the story sounded different.
Naomi spread the old files across the library table at Ashcombe.
“You were warned,” she said.
Elias stood by the cold fireplace.
“About the fiduciary?”
“About Martin.”
A former clerk had written Elias a private memo after the guardianship hearing. The memo questioned discrepancies in Martin’s billing records and noted that he had pressured court staff to accelerate approval.
Elias remembered the memo.
He also remembered Martin dismissing the clerk as ambitious and inexperienced.
“What did I do with it?” Elias asked.
“You forwarded it to Martin.”
Naomi held up the email.
Elias sat down.
Outside, rain tapped against the windows. The clear weather of the courtyard had given way to three gray days. Police had completed their search, but the tape remained in several places, drooping between stone urns.
“Why?” he asked, though the answer was visible in his own words.
Please address these concerns and reassure Ms. Chen that the matter has been reviewed.
Naomi folded her arms.
“You trusted the person being questioned to conduct the review.”
“I was handling twelve active trials.”
“You were busy.”
“That is not an excuse.”
“No.”
He looked at her.
She had been the clerk who wrote the memo.
“I damaged your career,” he said.
“You wrote in my evaluation that I had difficulty respecting professional boundaries.”
“I thought you did.”
“I had difficulty respecting Martin.”
“You left chambers early.”
“I left because I knew I would never be heard again.”
Elias rubbed both hands over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
May you like
Naomi looked at the rain.
“For years, I wanted you to say that,” she said. “Now that you have, I mostly want you to stop using apologies as a way to conclude the conversation.”
