Chương 14
He dried badly.
She handed him a plate.
“You missed a spot.”
“It’s water.”
“That is what drying removes.”
“You are very controlling in the kitchen.”
“Get out.”
He smiled.
On the refrigerator, Margaret laughed from the old company picnic photograph.
Alexander had seen it before but rarely looked directly at it.
Tonight he did.
“I remember that picnic,” he said.
Anna turned.
“You were there?”
“I was thirteen.”
“Do you remember her?”
He studied the photograph.
“I remember a woman beating my father at horseshoes.”
Anna stared.
“My mother?”
“I think so.”
“My mother had terrible aim.”
“So did he.”
She laughed.
Alexander smiled.
Then went quiet.
“I wish I remembered more.”
Anna leaned against the counter.
“Me too.”
He looked at her.
For once, neither tried to make the sentence less sad.
A month later, Anna signed the trust agreement.
Maya insisted on calling it a restructuring, not an inheritance.
Alexander’s lawyers insisted on several other words Anna immediately forgot.
The effect was simpler.
Going forward, Anna would have an equal economic interest with Alexander in the portion of the family holdings Nathan had passed down through him.
Not because an old unsigned document magically made her queen of anything.
Because Alexander had decided that retaining all of Nathan’s benefit while acknowledging Nathan’s abandoned child was indefensible.
And because Anna, after months of resisting money simply because it came from the Hales, had decided accepting a share did not mean accepting their version of her.
She kept her apartment.
For a while.
Then the landlord raised a different issue, the upstairs neighbor acquired a drum set, and Priya announced she was moving in with the person who had finally become a date.
Anna rented a one-bedroom in Queens.
Not a penthouse.
Not a mansion.
A sunny apartment with a dishwasher and a radiator that did not scream.
She bought a secondhand dining table because the new one she liked cost four thousand dollars and she could not psychologically survive becoming a person who paid four thousand dollars for a table.
Alexander told her this was irrational.
She told him his watch cost more than her first car.
He stopped discussing irrational spending.
Anna left banquet service the following year.
Not because she was ashamed of it.
Because after nine years in hospitality, she realized she did not actually enjoy being polite to drunk men who snapped their fingers.
She enrolled part-time in a hospitality management program and continued running the worker emergency fund.
Luis joined its advisory committee.
Mateo did too, after his wife obtained stable legal counsel and their family stopped receiving visits from strangers.
The fund’s first grant paid three weeks of rent for a housekeeper whose son had been hospitalized.
The second paid for a line cook’s dental surgery.
The third application was fraudulent.
Anna discovered that human generosity did not magically make administration noble.
She spent an entire Tuesday arguing about receipts.
It was strangely satisfying.
Claire came to dinner sometimes.
Their relationship remained uneven.
Anna liked her.
Then resented liking her.
Sometimes Claire told stories about Nathan and Anna became angry afterward without knowing why.
Once she asked Claire to stop talking about him.
Three months later she asked for more.
Nobody handled it perfectly.
That helped.
Alexander returned to the Hale company after the board review ended.
Not as the same chief executive.
Several executives were replaced. New employee complaint procedures were created. Outside oversight was added in areas Alexander had once considered beneath his direct attention.
Some employees believed the changes were meaningful.
Others called them reputation management.
Both were probably partly right.
Alexander learned that improvement did not guarantee applause.
Anna considered this healthy for him.
On the second anniversary of Margaret’s death, Anna took the subway to the cemetery alone.
She carried no flowers.
Her mother had disliked cut flowers.
“Expensive corpses,” Margaret called them.
Anna brought a small paper bag of garlic bread from the neighborhood Italian place instead.
It was stupid.
She knew it was stupid.
She sat on the grass beside the headstone and ate one piece.
“Turns out you were right about him,” she said.
Wind moved through the bare branches.
There was no answer.
“Also wrong about some things.”
Nothing.
Anna picked at the paper bag.
“I’m still mad.”
A groundskeeper drove past in a small utility cart.
She waited until the sound faded.
“You should have told me.”
Her throat tightened.
“You should have let me be angry at him while you were still here.”
She wiped her cheek.
“And I’m sorry I made you carry being angry at me too.”
The apology did not repair anything.
That was no longer what apologies were for.
She sat until the afternoon cooled.
Before leaving, she tucked the empty paper bag into her purse because Margaret would have been furious if she littered.
Outside the cemetery gates, Alexander waited beside a black car.
Anna stopped.
He lifted both hands.
“Priya told me where you were.”
“I’m going to kill her.”
“She said you might.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might want a ride.”
“I might not.”
“I know.”
Anna narrowed her eyes.
He smiled.
“I used it correctly.”
She walked toward the car.
Then stopped beside him.
“Did you bring anything?”
“For the cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good.”
They stood quietly.
Traffic passed behind them.
Alexander looked through the iron gates.
“I’ve never been here.”
“I know.”
“I thought about coming.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t sure it was mine.”
Anna understood.
Not the cemetery.
The grief.
She looked at him.
“It can be yours too.”
Alexander swallowed.
He nodded.
They did not go back inside.
Not that day.
Instead they walked six blocks to a diner and argued about whether Nathan’s hatred of leaf blowers was his only defensible opinion.
Life continued.
May you like
The Hale name remained on hotels, office towers, charitable buildings, lawsuits, business articles, and a museum wing Anna refused to visit because she disliked modern sculpture.
Victoria completed the terms of her sentence and moved out of New York.
