Chương 6
Mara looked at Victoria.
“You said alone.”
“I said I came alone.”
“That’s rich-person grammar.”
Sofia drove them to a furnished studio above a community clinic in Ukrainian Village. The apartment had a narrow bed, a table, two mismatched chairs, and a window facing an alley where someone had planted tomatoes in five-gallon buckets. Tessa was there with groceries and an expression that suggested Victoria’s presence lowered the property value.
Mara inspected the lock, the bathroom window, the space beneath the bed, and the smoke detector.
“It is not recording you,” Tessa said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were about to.”
Victoria remained by the door. “Camille Price would like to speak with you.”
“Your lawyer.”
“An independent attorney.”
“Paid by you.”
“Paid by the company.”
“That is somehow worse.”
“She can arrange for the locket to be examined without taking it from you.”
Mara sat on the bed. The mattress springs complained.
“What happens if it’s real?”
“I find out what happened to my mother.”
“And if it isn’t?”
Victoria looked at the locket beneath Mara’s hand.
“Then I find out what happened to you.”
Mara’s expression closed. “Don’t make me your charity project.”
“That was not what I meant.”
“It sounded exactly like what you meant.”
Tessa began putting cans into a cupboard. “Both of you are tired. Neither of you gets better when tired.”
Victoria turned toward the door.
Mara said, “There was a letter.”
Victoria stopped.
“At the church shelter,” Mara continued. “Your mother wrote you a letter.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know. She folded it before I could read it.”
“What happened to it?”
“She gave it to a volunteer named June. Said June had to mail it herself.”
“Did you see the address?”
“The hotel. Your father’s office.”
Victoria faced her. “Why didn’t you mention this yesterday?”
“You kept asking questions like I was on trial.”
“You are asking me to question everything I was told about my mother.”
“I’m not asking. That already happened when you saw the locket.”
The following week brought no revelation large enough to match the public appetite.
A jeweler examined the locket under Mara’s supervision. The gold and sapphire were consistent with the 1930s. Microscopic marks around the hinge matched an insurance photograph from 1988. The engraved V appeared hand-cut and old. Fibers beneath the inner rim contained traces of degraded photographic paper, though the photograph itself was gone.
Mara said Eleanor had removed the picture before giving it to her.
“What was it?” Camille asked.
“Victoria in a red sweater.”
Victoria owned a childhood photograph in which she wore a red sweater beside Lake Michigan. Her mother had carried a trimmed copy in the locket. The family had never released it.
The police reopened the missing-person file as a cold-case review, careful to call it a review rather than an investigation. Detective Lena Cho met Victoria in a plain interview room and warned her that memories changed over decades.
“So do official stories,” Victoria said.
“Official stories are often memories typed by someone with a pension.”
Cho found an old juvenile contact report under the name Mary Alice rather than Mara Ellis. A fifteen-year-old girl had told a transit officer that an injured woman named Eleanor was hiding from men connected to a hotel. The officer classified the statement as attention-seeking behavior.
A handwritten note at the bottom read: Family counsel contacted. No missing adult located. Juvenile returned to care.
The family counsel was not named.
Grant issued a statement calling the review painful but appropriate. He said he welcomed facts and rejected speculation. His photograph accompanied the statement: silver hair, navy tie, compassionate mouth.
Then his attorney contacted Mara.
The proposed agreement offered her one hundred fifty thousand dollars in exchange for the locket, all copies of related correspondence, and permanent confidentiality concerning any member of the Hale family.
Mara brought the papers to Victoria’s office in a grocery bag.
She threw them onto the desk.
“This your version of listening?”
Victoria read the first page twice. “I did not authorize this.”
“Your name is in it.”
“My name is listed as a protected party. That does not mean I approved it.”
“You expect me to understand how your family buys silence?”
“No.”
“Good, because the instructions are confusing.”
Daniel picked up the agreement. “Grant’s personal attorney sent this, not company counsel.”
Mara turned on him. “You always sound calmer when something is worse.”
“I’m trying to be precise.”
“You think precision makes you innocent.”
His face changed slightly.
Victoria noticed.
“Mara,” she said, “did you ask Grant for money?”
“No.”
“Did anyone ask for money on your behalf?”
“No.”
“Did Tessa?”
Mara stepped back as though struck.
Daniel said quietly, “Victoria.”
“What? I have to know.”
“Tessa found me a room when your foundation had a six-month waiting list,” Mara said. “She bought me antibiotics when the clinic said my address didn’t match. Don’t put her in this because your uncle is dirty.”
“I asked a question.”
“You asked the easiest ugly question.”
Mara reached for the agreement, but Victoria placed her palm over it.
“I need a copy.”
“Get one from your uncle.”
“This is evidence.”
“So is the locket, but you don’t get that either.”
She pulled the papers free. One page tore across the signature line.
Mara looked at it, suddenly distressed.
“I didn’t sign,” she said.
“I know.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
Her voice rose for the first time. The room beyond Victoria’s office fell quiet.
Mara pressed the torn page together on the desk. Her fingers shook. “I thought maybe I would. For a minute.”
Victoria did not move.
“One hundred fifty thousand dollars is not nothing,” Mara said. “People with houses like to say money isn’t the point. Money is the point when your teeth hurt and winter is coming.”
“You were allowed to consider it.”
“No, I wasn’t. Not if I wanted you to believe me.”
May you like
“Those things are not connected.”
“They are to everyone watching.”
