Part 5
“Then what?”
Martin looked toward the bag.
“Your mother would not have wanted strangers deciding what became of her.”
Julian laughed without humor. “You have an interesting idea of what she wanted.”
Martin accepted that.
The guests remained where they were.
Lydia reached for the black bag.
Her hand stopped halfway there.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
Martin looked at Julian first.
Julian did not know why that made him angry. Perhaps because Martin was still asking. Perhaps because some part of him wanted Martin to take control so he could hate him again.
Finally Julian nodded.
Martin set the bag on the coffee table.
Lydia opened it carefully.
The white tissue paper made a faint sound as she folded it back.
The clock lay beneath it.
Gold. Small. Almost modest.
The reflective face had a tiny crack near the edge, one Julian had never noticed before. The chain had been wound around itself so many times it looked like a sleeping thing.
Lydia touched the dent near the clasp.
Her breath caught.
“I did that,” she said.
Julian looked at her.
“When I was eleven. Mom let me hold it in the bathroom. I dropped it on the tile.” Lydia laughed once, then covered her mouth. “She said it was all right. She said old things should look old.”
Martin watched her with an expression Julian could not read.
“My mother used to carry it in her purse,” Julian said.
“Yes,” Lydia replied.
“She said it helped her get places on time.”
“She was always late.”
“She was late because Dad made her wait.”
Lydia looked up at him.
Julian had not meant to say it.
The sentence hung in the room.
Claire moved to the sofa and sat beside Lydia. She did not put an arm around her. She only sat close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.
Martin looked down at his hands.
“That was true,” he said.
Julian’s stomach turned.
He remembered his mother waiting in the hallway while his father finished phone calls. Remembered her sitting in the car with the engine running, fingers folded in her lap. Remembered her apologizing to restaurant hosts, museum guards, friends, anyone who had expected her somewhere at a certain time.
He had always assumed it was one of her charming flaws.
The kind of thing the family laughed about later.
He saw it differently now.
Not all at once. Not cleanly.
But enough.
His father had been generous in public. His father had told waiters to keep the change. His father remembered birthdays. His father bought books for Julian and Lydia, though he rarely asked what they thought of them.
A person could be generous and cruel.
A person could love his children and still teach them fear.
Julian had known that, perhaps.
He had simply never allowed himself to say it.
Martin’s phone buzzed again.
He looked down.
Julian watched his face.
“What now?”
Martin turned the screen toward him.
A new attachment had arrived.
The file name was not a date this time.
It was his mother’s name.
Clara Ashford — Private.
Julian felt something cold move through him.
“What is that?”
Martin’s voice lowered. “A letter she wrote the week before she died.”
Lydia made a sharp sound.
Julian stared at the phone.
“She died six years ago.”
“Yes.”
“She wrote you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Martin did not answer.
The question had too many answers.
Because she had once trusted him. Because she had no one else. Because guilt could become a strange kind of intimacy between people who had failed one another. Because perhaps she had wanted Julian and Lydia to know what happened but had not been able to tell them herself.
Julian hated all of those possibilities.
He hated that any of them could be true.
“Read it,” Lydia said.
Julian looked at her.
She was still holding the clock.
Her champagne gown shimmered under the chandelier, but her face looked stripped of everything decorative.
“Not tonight,” he said.
Lydia’s eyes narrowed.
“You opened the ledger.”
“That was different.”
“Why?”
“Because it was about money.”
Lydia laughed once, bitterly. “Of course that is what you think is different.”
Claire looked away.
Julian felt the room turn against him and wanted to fight it.
He wanted to say that money had kept the house standing. That money had paid for his mother’s care. That money had been the reason they were all still here in this room instead of scattered into smaller lives somewhere else.
But he could not say any of it without hearing his father’s voice.
I moved money that belongs to this family.
He swallowed.
Lydia held the clock tighter.
“I want to hear her,” she said.
Julian looked at Martin.
Martin did not touch the phone.
It was Julian’s hand resting beside it on the coffee table.
His hand.
His choice.
The room waited.
He pressed play.
At first there was only paper movement.
Then his mother’s voice came through.
She sounded older than Julian remembered. Not frail. Just tired in a way he had never been old enough to understand.
“Martin,” she said.
The recording paused briefly, as if she had been gathering courage.
“If you are hearing this, I have either failed to say what I should have said, or I have decided I am too tired to say it again.”
Julian closed his eyes.
Her voice continued.
“I do not know which is worse.”
Nobody moved.
“You must tell Julian and Lydia the truth. Not all at once if you cannot. But you must not let Malcolm become a saint because he died before he could answer for himself.”
Julian’s fingers curled against the glass table.
“He was not always cruel,” she said. “That is why I stayed longer than I should have. He was frightened. He was proud. He was sick with the fear of losing what he thought made him worth loving.”
Claire pressed her lips together.
May you like
Lydia began to cry silently.
The recording continued.
