Chương 3
“When did you go back?” she asked.
“April. The shelter had closed its winter beds. The woman at the desk was gone. Nobody knew Nora. Or nobody wanted to say.”
“And then you searched for me for thirty-four years?”
“Not every day.”
The bluntness again.
“I worked. I got married. I got divorced. I lived in four states. Sometimes I had a phone. Sometimes I didn’t. Your name changed in magazines, then changed back. Letters came back. One didn’t.”
“One what?”
“One didn’t come back.”
“When did you send it?”
“1998. Certified mail to your father’s office.”
“Did you receive a response?”
Mara reached into the lining of her coat and produced a folded plastic sandwich bag. Inside were three papers softened at the creases. She removed the smallest: a certified-mail receipt stamped more than twenty-eight years earlier.
The signature line contained two initials.
G.H.
Victoria recognized her uncle’s handwriting before she admitted it to herself.
Grant Hale made his capital G like a figure eight. He had signed every birthday card that way, every board resolution, every note sent with flowers after Victoria’s father died.
She set the receipt on the table.
“What did the letter say?”
“The same thing I’m telling you.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“I wasn’t running a law office.”
The luncheon quartet began in the lobby. The first notes were faint through the door.
Daniel picked up the receipt without touching the signature. “Grant was general counsel then.”
“I know what Grant was.”
Victoria took out her phone.
Mara stood so abruptly that tea spilled across the saucer.
“If you call him while I’m here, I leave.”
“He signed for your letter.”
“He knew I had the locket.”
“Then I intend to ask him why he never gave it to me.”
“You think he’ll answer because you’re rich?”
“He answers because I chair the board.”
Mara laughed once. It was not amusement. “Your mother thought being a Hale meant people had to answer too.”
Victoria’s thumb remained over Grant’s name.
Daniel lowered his voice. “We can verify the signature without warning him.”
“I am not conducting an investigation in my own hotel parlor.”
“That is exactly what you’re doing.”
Victoria put the phone facedown.
A knock sounded.
Sofia opened the door only far enough to speak. “Your guests are seated. We can delay another ten minutes.”
“Cancel my remarks.”
Daniel looked at her.
“The foundation director can present the grants,” Victoria said. “Tell them I have a family emergency.”
Mara’s shoulders shifted at the word family.
Sofia nodded. “There is one more issue. A guest posted a video from the entrance. It is spreading.”
“How much did it capture?”
“The locket. Part of the first exchange. The audio is clear.”
Mara pulled the hood of her coat over her hair.
Victoria stood. “Have communications say nothing.”
“They are asking whether Ms. Ellis was removed from the property.”
“She was not.”
“May I tell them that?”
“No. Tell them nothing.”
Mara watched her. “You like locked doors.”
“I like facts before statements.”
“Rich people call silence facts until they decide which facts they can afford.”
Victoria turned away before answering. Beyond the parlor window, people crossed the lobby with champagne flutes and printed programs bearing her name.
She had spent most of her adult life believing composure was a kind of honesty. Her mother had been emotional, her father said. Unstable. Difficult. She changed plans, cried at dinners, slept late, accused people of conspiring against her. Victoria had repeated those descriptions in therapy until they began to sound like memories.
Now a cracked piece of gold sat on the table between an expired identification card and a certified receipt signed by the man who had taught her to drive.
“What do you want?” Victoria asked.
Mara’s chin lifted.
“I knew we’d get there.”
“I am asking a direct question.”
“I want you to listen.”
“I have listened.”
“No. You’ve collected.”
The quartet moved into a waltz. A burst of applause followed from the ballroom, polite and misplaced.
Victoria looked at the wet ring the teacup had left on the mahogany.
“Do you need a place to stay tonight?”
Mara’s mouth tightened. “That isn’t what I came for.”
“I did not say it was.”
“I’m not sleeping here.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d wake up and the locket would be gone.”
Daniel leaned forward. “No one will take it.”
“You can’t promise for everyone in this building.”
Mara placed the receipt back in its plastic bag. She kept the locket around two fingers.
Victoria touched the seam of her embroidered coat. “There is a residential hotel two blocks west. It is not owned by us. Sofia can arrange a room under your name. No conditions.”
“Three nights.”
“A week.”
“Three.”
“Fine.”
“And cash for food. Not vouchers.”
Victoria felt irritation rise before she could prevent it. “You seem comfortable making conditions.”
“I’ve been homeless nineteen months. Conditions are most of what people give me.”
Daniel reached for his wallet.
Mara shook her head. “From her.”
Victoria gave her two hundred dollars.
Mara counted it in front of them. She folded the bills separately, placing some in her wallet, some inside her shoe, and one twenty in the torn lining of her coat.
“You expect to be robbed?” Victoria asked.
“I expect things.”
Before leaving, Mara tore a corner from the luncheon program and wrote a phone number on it. Her handwriting slanted backward.
“It belongs to a woman named Tessa at the drop-in center. She gets messages to me.”
“You don’t have a phone?”
“It was stolen Tuesday.”
Victoria took the paper.
Mara reached the door, then turned. “Your mother had a scar under her left ribs. Half-moon shape. She said it came from a fence when she was a kid.”
Victoria’s throat constricted.
May you like
No photograph showed the scar. Her mother had displayed it only at the lake, where she changed from a wet bathing suit behind towels and complained that the skin pulled in cold water.
“Why didn’t you say that first?”
