Chương 8
“You said you found records.”
“Not all of them.”
“Did she ask him?”
“There are letters.”
Anna looked up.
“What letters?”
“From your mother.”
The coffee turned sour in her mouth.
“To him?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Seven that we found.”
“What did they say?”
Alexander’s eyes met hers.
“She asked him to honor the agreement.”
Anna looked back at the statements.
A child at the next table was stacking jelly containers into a tower. His mother removed one from the bottom and the tower collapsed.
He laughed.
Anna wanted to hit someone.
“What did he say?”
“We haven’t found replies.”
“Of course not.”
“There may not be any.”
“Of course not.”
“Anna—”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
She pushed the papers away.
“My mother worked double shifts.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right.”
“She sold our car when I was eleven.”
Alexander looked down.
“She made me think it was because she liked walking.”
He did not speak.
“She took me to community college financial aid offices and sat there for three hours because we were short six hundred dollars. Six hundred.”
Alexander’s jaw tightened.
“I am not asking you to forgive him.”
“Good.”
“I don’t.”
Anna looked at him.
That was the first time she saw something other than controlled anger.
Not grief exactly.
Disgust.
Personal disgust.
“You hated him.”
Alexander rubbed a thumb over the scar in his eyebrow.
“We had a complicated relationship.”
“That means yes in rich people.”
“It means I spent twenty years trying to become a man he would respect and the next seven realizing I did not respect the man he had been.”
Anna stared at him.
The waitress returned and poured more coffee.
She looked at Alexander’s untouched water.
“You still sure about the tea?”
He almost laughed.
“Yes.”
After she left, Anna asked, “Why did you call me the real heir?”
He looked uncomfortable.
“Because I was angry.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“My father’s estate plan changed repeatedly in his final years.”
“So?”
“One version included a provision that any biological child he had failed to acknowledge would receive the same beneficial interest as his acknowledged children.”
Anna blinked.
“One version?”
“Yes.”
“Not the final one?”
“No.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because I had seen that provision years ago, and when you said there was a DNA letter, I thought—”
“You thought your dramatic sentence sounded good.”
He looked at her.
“Yes.”
Anna sat back.
“Wow.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“No, this is useful. You can admit when you sound stupid.”
“I’ve had practice this week.”
She nearly smiled.
Then remembered Victoria.
“What happens to her?”
His face changed.
“The criminal case is not mine to decide.”
“I know.”
“We are separated.”
Anna had not expected the word to sting, but it did.
Perhaps because it sounded too tidy.
“You were married eleven years.”
“Twelve.”
“And one night ends it?”
“No.”
Alexander looked at the straw wrapper he had destroyed into a soft spiral.
“One night revealed something I can’t live beside.”
“Did you know she was like that?”
He took too long.
Anna saw it.
“Alexander.”
“I knew she could be cruel.”
“To staff?”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed married to her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His first answer did not come.
His second did.
“Because she was rarely cruel to people I considered important.”
Anna felt heat rise behind her ribs.
Alexander looked at her directly.
“I know how that sounds.”
“No. I don’t think you do.”
“I do now.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Yes.”
“Did people complain?”
“Sometimes.”
“What did you do?”
“Passed it to management.”
“You own the hotel.”
“Our company owns the hotel.”
“Oh, please.”
He flinched.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Anna leaned forward.
“She knew she could hit me because she knew nobody had ever made her afraid of what happened after she humiliated an employee.”
Alexander said nothing.
“You kicked the crop across the ballroom and everyone acts like you rescued me.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get credit for being better than the person holding the weapon.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
His voice changed.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know!”
The couple in the next booth glanced over.
Anna lowered her voice.
“That’s the problem. Everybody keeps asking what I want. Lawyers, reporters, Priya, you. I don’t know. I wanted a father. He’s dead. I wanted the truth. The truth is he knew about me and apparently stopped sending checks when I was four.”
She wiped at her eyes angrily.
“I wanted my mother to have told me the truth. She didn’t. I wanted Victoria to keep her hands off me. She didn’t. None of those things can be fixed.”
Alexander’s voice was quieter when he answered.
“No.”
Anna looked at him.
He seemed tired.
Not powerful.
Not useful.
Just tired.
For reasons she could not explain, that helped.
She stood.
“I need to leave.”
He rose too.
“Anna.”
“What?”
“There is one more document.”
Her stomach dropped.
“What?”
“A letter from my father.”
“To my mother?”
“No.”
“To who?”
“Me.”
She stared.
“When?”
“Two months before he died.”
“What does it say?”
Alexander swallowed.
“I never opened it.”
Anna almost laughed from disbelief.
“You have a letter from our father sitting around for seven years and you never opened it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the last thing he said to me in person was that I had disappointed him.”
Anna said nothing.
“He died two days after the letter arrived. I assumed it was more of the same.”
“Where is it?”
“My apartment.”
“You think it mentions me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why bring it up now?”
“Because my father’s assistant kept copies of outgoing correspondence. We found a log entry for it yesterday.”
“What does the log say?”
Alexander took a breath.
“‘Personal. Regarding Margaret and A.M.’”
Anna sat down again.
The waitress walked past, saw their faces, and kept walking.
“Get it,” Anna said.
Alexander nodded.
“No.”
He stopped.
May you like
“I want to be there.”
That evening they opened Nathan Hale’s letter together.
