Chương 14
Emily almost laughed.
Diane opened the door.
On the porch, Emily paused.
“Do you regret buying it?” she asked.
Diane considered the question. “Ask me after the first property-tax bill.”
Then she went back inside.
Emily brought the recipe box to Margaret’s apartment.
Robert answered the door.
He looked older than he had at the courthouse. Without the mansion around him, his dark jacket seemed too formal, like clothing from an institution he no longer represented.
“Your mother is at the clinic,” he said.
“Is she sick?”
“Routine appointment.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to be managed.”
Emily held up the box. “The Holloways found this.”
Robert stepped aside.
The apartment had changed in three weeks. Margaret had placed a blue bowl on the table, bought two plants for the balcony, and hung family photographs along the hall. None included the mansion as the main subject, though pieces of it appeared behind faces.
Emily set the recipe box on the counter.
Robert filled the kettle.
“I don’t want tea,” she said.
“I do.”
He made one cup.
They stood in the kitchen while the water heated.
“I spoke to another lawyer,” he said.
Emily waited.
“He said the sale is unlikely to be reversed.”
“Yes.”
“He believes we may have a claim against Daniel.”
“For intercepting the notices?”
“And mishandling funds.”
“Will you pursue it?”
Robert looked toward the kettle.
“No.”
“Why?”
“He’s my son.”
“So am I.”
He glanced at her. “You’re my daughter.”
“That was not the correction you thought it was.”
The kettle clicked off.
Robert poured water over a tea bag. His hand trembled slightly.
“I lost the company before the foreclosure,” he said. “The rest was paperwork.”
Emily leaned against the counter.
He had never said lost. He had said delayed, restructuring, temporary shortfall, market correction.
“I kept believing the next project would restore everything,” he continued. “Not only money. The way people looked at me. The way Daniel looked at me.”
“How did he look at you?”
“As if I knew what came next.”
Robert carried the mug to the table but remained standing.
“You never looked at me that way,” he said.
“I was twelve when I learned you didn’t.”
His eyes moved to her.
Emily had not planned the sentence. Memory had arrived through the steam from the tea, carrying the smell of the office Robert once kept above a lumberyard. She had gone there after school and found him sitting in darkness with three red notices on his desk. When she asked what happened, he told her not to worry and then asked whether she had any money from her summer job.
She had given him eighty-six dollars.
He returned it at Christmas inside a card that said, For my responsible girl.
“You were always watching,” Robert said.
“Someone had to.”
“That is what your mother says.”
“She is right.”
He sat.
Emily looked at the photographs in the hall. Sophie at eight with two missing teeth. Daniel holding a fishing pole. Margaret in the kitchen, flour on one cheek. Emily herself in uniform at a promotion ceremony, standing at the edge of the frame while Robert shook Colonel Avery’s hand.
“I did not think Daniel would submit the application,” Robert said.
“You knew about the signature page?”
“I knew he had old documents.”
“That is not what I asked.”
He rubbed the tea-bag string between his fingers.
“Yes.”
The admission was quiet.
Emily’s body reacted before her mind did. Her shoulders went rigid. Her jaw tightened. The kitchen narrowed around the table.
“You knew.”
“I told him not to use it without speaking to you.”
“But you let him submit the packet.”
“I didn’t know he had.”
“You signed the beneficial-ownership affidavit.”
“It was a draft.”
“It was notarized.”
Robert looked down.
Emily pushed away from the counter. “You lied under oath.”
“The affidavit in the civil case described my understanding of the house.”
“I mean the lender affidavit.”
“I believed I retained an equitable interest.”
“Because you wanted one.”
“Because you promised.”
“I promised to save your home. I did.”
“And then you sold it.”
“After you tried to borrow against it.”
Robert stood. “We were trying to save the company.”
“No. You were trying to save the version of yourself that owned the company.”
His mug tipped when his hand struck the table. Tea spread across the wood and dripped onto the carpet.
They both stared at it.
Robert fetched a dish towel. He knelt slowly and pressed it to the wet patch.
Emily watched her father clean the floor of a rented apartment.
The anger did not leave. It changed temperature.
“Will you tell the investigator?” she asked.
He kept blotting the carpet.
“I don’t know.”
“If you lie again, Daniel may use you to support his story.”
“He is facing prison.”
“No one has said that.”
“The lawyer did.”
“His lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly did he say?”
Robert sat back on his heels. “That financial fraud can carry incarceration.”
“That is not a prediction.”
“He has never been in trouble.”
“He has been in trouble for years. Other people paid it.”
Robert looked up at her.
Emily took the wet towel from his hand and carried it to the sink. She rinsed it under cold water.
“I haven’t decided whether to cooperate beyond the records they already have,” she said.
“You would let him be charged?”
“I may tell the truth.”
“He has a family.”
“So do I.”
Robert lowered himself into the chair.
The apartment door opened.
Margaret entered carrying a pharmacy bag and stopped when she saw them.
“What happened?”
“Tea,” Emily said.
Margaret looked at the damp carpet, Robert’s face, and the recipe box on the counter.
“That must have been strong tea.”
No one laughed.
A week later, Robert asked to meet with the investigator.
May you like
He did not tell Daniel beforehand.
Margaret drove him because Emily refused. At the federal-style office building used by the county task force, Robert waited forty minutes beneath fluorescent lights and read the same page of a fishing magazine.
