Chương 5
Clara pressed her fingers to her forehead. “That was cheap.”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No.”
The baby opened his eyes, unfocused and dark. Gwen shifted him higher.
“He has Marcus’s ears,” she said, and laughed once in a broken, surprised way. “That’s such a stupid thing to say.”
Clara remembered Marcus’s ears. They stuck out slightly, giving him a permanently attentive look.
“Where is Marcus?” she asked.
“His sister’s place in Richmond.”
“Why did he leave?”
“He wanted me to confess before the baby was born. I kept saying I needed time. Then Victoria sent him a picture of the foundation ledger and said she could have me arrested at the hospital. He said he couldn’t watch me keep choosing fear.”
“Was he wrong?”
Gwen looked down. “No.”
Julian moved away from the door and set the broken folder on the table. “You need a lawyer tonight.”
“I can’t afford one.”
“I can find someone.”
Clara turned on him. “You’re representing her now?”
“No. I’m not practicing criminal law, and I shouldn’t advise her.”
“But you’ll arrange it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because testimony given without counsel will be attacked, and because she has a child.”
Gwen’s mouth tightened. “I don’t need pity.”
“What you need and what you can afford are separate problems.”
There was Julian’s voice, the one Clara could recognize from another room: precise, unsentimental, sometimes kind by accident.
The consultation-room door opened again. Thomas stood outside.
“Your mother is asking for Clara.”
Margaret could not form full sentences yet. Her speech came in fragments, each word delayed by effort. Clara sat beside the bed while Thomas hovered near the window and adjusted the blinds even though the sun had gone down.
Margaret’s silver hair lay flat on one side. Adhesive from an electrode marked her chest above the hospital gown. When Clara took her hand, Margaret’s fingers felt dry and unexpectedly strong.
“Bag,” she said.
“I found it.”
Margaret’s eyes shifted toward Thomas.
“The papers too,” Clara said.
Thomas stopped touching the blinds.
Margaret swallowed. “No sign.”
“You didn’t sign them.”
“No.”
“Did Victoria ask you to?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Thomas moved closer. “Margaret, we don’t need to do this now.”
Her eyes sharpened. The expression was so familiar that Clara almost smiled. Her mother had used the same look on residents who tried to answer questions they had not been asked.
“Tom,” Margaret said.
He fell silent.
Clara leaned closer. “Why did you have Victoria’s handbag?”
Margaret lifted one hand a few inches and let it fall. “Fight.”
“You argued?”
“Kitchen.”
“About the trust?”
“Yes.”
Thomas sat in the visitor chair. “She came over with documents. Margaret became upset.”
Margaret’s mouth pulled sideways. “He knew.”
Clara looked at her father.
Thomas stared at the floor.
“Knew what?” Clara asked.
Margaret closed her eyes. For a moment Clara thought she had drifted off. Then she said, “Money.”
The monitor traced her heart rhythm in green light.
Thomas exhaled. “I knew there were irregularities.”
“How much?”
“I didn’t know.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Victoria told me vendors were behind on documentation.”
“And you believed her?”
“I wanted to.”
Margaret’s fingers tightened around Clara’s.
Thomas looked at his wife. “I thought we could correct it quietly.”
“By removing me from the trust?”
“By preventing a public family fight.”
Clara glanced at the monitor. Her mother’s heart rate had risen by six beats.
“This conversation is over for now.”
Margaret opened her eyes. “No.”
“You need rest.”
“You always say that.”
Despite the heaviness in her face, the old impatience came through. Clara heard herself at sixteen, telling Margaret to sit down after surgery while Margaret carried laundry upstairs one-handed.
“I’m a doctor,” Clara said.
“You’re bossy.”
Thomas gave a strained laugh, then stopped when neither woman joined him.
Margaret turned her eyes toward the door. “Gwen?”
“She’s downstairs.”
“Baby?”
“Fine.”
“Not Julian.”
“No.”
Margaret nodded once. The movement exhausted her. Clara pulled the blanket higher across her chest.
“How did you know?” Clara asked.
Margaret’s gaze moved toward the side table, where her reading glasses lay folded beside a plastic water cup.
“Victoria,” she said. “Too pleased.”
Clara understood. Her mother had never trusted happiness that arrived in the form of someone else’s humiliation.
“Did you take the USB?”
Margaret nodded.
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
Clara felt anger rise again, but beneath it was something more difficult. Her mother had suspected enough to steal evidence yet had still invited Victoria into the house. Thomas had suspected missing money yet had tried to manage it privately. Every person in the family had chosen delay and called it love.
“Mom, I may have damaged the files when I opened it.”
“Of course you opened it.”
“I used a hospital computer.”
Margaret’s expression changed slightly, almost amusement. “Bossy and reckless.”
Clara laughed before she could stop herself. The laugh turned into a breath that hurt.
A nurse entered to check Margaret’s pressure. The cuff inflated around her arm with a low mechanical hum.
Thomas walked into the hall. Clara followed when the nurse gave her a look.
Her father stood beside the water fountain, holding a paper cup he had not filled.
“Victoria says you’ve been trying to take the foundation from her for years,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to make her produce invoices.”
“She thinks you enjoy proving she’s irresponsible.”
“Do you?”
Thomas crushed the rim of the cup between his fingers. “Sometimes.”
The admission landed differently from denial.
“She has always felt measured against you,” he continued. “Your grades, medical school, the way your mother relies on you.”
“So you protected her from accounting standards.”
“I protected the family from public disgrace.”
“You protected yourself from admitting she might have stolen money.”
His jaw tightened. “She is my daughter.”
“So am I.”
“I know.”
May you like
“Do you?”
A transport team pushed an empty wheelchair past them. One of the attendants complained quietly about the cafeteria running out of soup. The other said the soup had been terrible anyway.
