Chương 6
Peter swallowed.
“That last request sounds specific.”
“It is.”
After the meeting, Peter asked to speak privately.
He closed the conference-room door and remained standing.
“I need you to understand something about Vivian.”
Sloane waited.
“She kept this place alive in 2020.”
“That keeps coming up.”
“Because it matters.”
“I didn’t say it didn’t.”
Peter adjusted his cuff.
“She put her own house up as collateral for a short-term facility.”
Sloane blinked.
“Vivian?”
“Yes.”
“That wasn’t in the documents.”
“It was released two years later.”
“How much?”
“Four million.”
Sloane stared at him.
“Why?”
“Because the board was frozen and your mother refused to sign a rescue proposal.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It was.”
“Which part?”
“Yes.”
Peter almost smiled.
Then he looked miserable again.
“Vivian is not what the video makes her look like.”
“She dragged me onto the floor with a cane.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He glanced at her bandaged knee.
“Yes.”
Sloane stood.
The height difference helped less than she hoped.
“Then don’t ask me to make her simpler because you owe her something.”
Peter’s face reddened.
“I owe her my job.”
“So do a lot of people.”
“That’s my point.”
“No. Your point is that people can do something necessary and still become dangerous after everyone learns to excuse them.”
Peter stopped.
Sloane heard her mother in the sentence and immediately disliked it.
She picked up her coffee.
It had gone cold.
“Get me the collateral documents.”
Peter nodded.
“And Peter?”
“Yes?”
“If you hid something because Vivian ordered you to, tell me before I find it. If you hid something because you thought it was right, tell me that too. I can work with bad judgment. I can’t work with surprises.”
His expression changed.
Not relief.
Something near it.
“There are expense transfers you should see.”
By noon, Vivian Cross had hired a lawyer.
By one, she had issued a statement.
Sloane read it sitting on the floor of her mother’s old office because the desk chair had a broken height lever and kept sinking.
Vivian’s statement said the encounter had been “deliberately provoked during a private charitable function.” It said the viral video showed “a brief physical misunderstanding stripped of its context.” It said Vivian had “grave concerns regarding the sudden transfer of control over an irreplaceable New York institution to an individual with no hotel leadership experience.”
The statement did not deny touching Sloane with the cane.
It also did not use Sloane’s name.
Rachel called.
“Do not respond.”
“I was going to send a picture of the bruise.”
“Do not.”
“A close-up.”
“No.”
“Maybe with a ruler.”
“Sloane.”
“I’m joking.”
“No, you’re angry.”
“Those can coexist.”
Rachel sighed.
“Police contacted hotel security because the video is public. You don’t need to decide anything right now.”
“Vivian’s lawyer will say I kicked her cane first.”
“The video establishes order.”
“I kicked it after she pulled me down.”
“I am aware of time.”
Sloane stared at the founder’s key lying across a stack of maintenance reports.
“Can the hotel survive without Halcyon?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“If I sell, Vivian wins.”
Rachel was quiet.
Sloane heard the stupidity only after saying it aloud.
“Forget that.”
“I was going to.”
“My mother warned me.”
“About Vivian?”
“About being stupid because I’m angry at her.”
“Your mother had excellent timing.”
Sloane looked around the office.
Eleanor had used it for three days in February, and the room still held almost nothing of her. A legal pad. Two pencils. A chipped mug with MERCER GRAND printed in gold. Someone had left a packet of peppermint tea in the drawer.
Her mother hated peppermint.
Sloane smiled.
“What?”
“There’s peppermint tea in here.”
Rachel paused.
“That’s important?”
“No.”
“Good. I was worried I missed a legal doctrine.”
After the call, Sloane made the tea anyway.
It was terrible.
She drank half.
At two fifteen, Marcus brought her a box of archived staff photographs.
“You asked about your mother.”
Sloane looked up.
“I did?”
“Not directly.”
“That’s dangerous logic for an employee.”
“I’m suspended emotionally.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
He set the box down.
“The preservation group called back. They’ll meet at five.”
“That fast?”
“They saw the video.”
Sloane groaned.
“Of course they did.”
“They also saw the ownership filing.”
“Less humiliating.”
“Marginally.”
Marcus noticed the tea.
“You hate peppermint.”
Sloane stared at him.
“How do you know that?”
“Your mother hated it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“She told the kitchen in February that serving peppermint tea after nine p.m. was evidence of declining civilization.”
Sloane laughed so suddenly that tea went down the wrong way.
Marcus handed her a napkin.
“That sounds like her.”
“Yes.”
“You liked her.”
Marcus looked at the photograph box.
“I was afraid of her.”
“Also sounds like her.”
“She asked questions after people answered.”
Sloane understood immediately.
Eleanor had done that to her as a child. The first answer was something you offered the world. The second was usually true.
Sloane opened the box.
The first folders were from the late eighties.
She found Eleanor in 1991.
Nineteen years old. Dark hair pulled back. Housekeeping uniform. No smile. Standing between Inez and a much younger Vivian Cross.
Vivian was twenty-three.
Her auburn hair was loose over one shoulder. She wore a banquet jacket two sizes too big and was laughing at something outside the frame.
Eleanor was looking at her.
Not at the camera.
At Vivian.
There was affection in her face so obvious that Sloane felt embarrassed to witness it.
She turned the photograph over.
In blue ink someone had written:
Night crew after the Madison wedding disaster. E. dropped twelve water glasses. V. blamed the dishwasher.
Below it, in different handwriting:
It WAS the dishwasher.
Sloane smiled.
“Who wrote that?”
Marcus leaned over.
“I’d guess Vivian.”
Sloane looked at the photograph again.
“How did they become this?”
Marcus did not answer.
He knew enough not to guess.
May you like
The preservation meeting lasted two hours and solved nothing.
That made Sloane trust it more.
