Part 4
Dominic went through both pages again, then a third time. He kept expecting some small qualification to appear, some detail that would let him place Lawrence back where he had belonged for thirty years.
There was none.
He set the papers down flat. Claire had told him the truth. He had rewarded her with suspicion while somebody stripped away her livelihood.
Acting on what he knew would require more than a private confrontation. Lawrence had spent decades making himself indispensable to the families allied with the Caruso name. Their leaders listened when he spoke. If Dominic removed him behind closed doors, they would hear a story about an unstable man turning on an old friend because a woman had asked him to.
The foundation benefit was approaching. Those men would all be there.
Before that evening, Claire received copies of the records. They arrived without money, excuses, or a request that she forgive him. She read them at her kitchen table and put them beside the invitation she had already received.
Near the end of October, she walked into the ballroom at the Bellweather alone. She had declined Dominic’s offer of a driver. Her dress was deep blue, bought two years earlier with her own money, and she checked her coat herself.
The ballroom held three hundred and sixty guests beneath elaborate chandeliers. Hospital trustees talked beside judges and council members. The leaders of five families stood in small groups, watching one another over untouched drinks.
Lawrence waited near a tall arrangement of champagne glasses.
“Miss Whitaker. I was distressed to hear about your difficulties at work.”
“I expect you were well informed.”
His smile remained pleasant. “There are people you ought to meet.”
Before she could answer, he moved toward the stage and took the microphone from the evening’s host.
“Please excuse me,” he began. “There’s something I can no longer keep to myself.”
Conversations dwindled. Claire stayed where she was.
Lawrence turned toward her with the sorrowful expression of a man announcing a family illness.
“For several weeks, this young woman has enjoyed Dominic’s confidence. His assistance. His protection. And now we learn she’s been having private conversations with the police.”
A few guests looked away from Claire; more turned directly toward her.
“I’ve known Dominic most of his life,” Lawrence continued. “I can’t watch him walk into danger simply because the warning will hurt him.”
Claire felt the familiar demand of a room waiting for an answer. She had faced grieving families with less sleep and fewer facts than she had tonight.
She walked forward.
“I’ll answer you,” she said. “Let them hear that, too.”
Lawrence held the microphone out with a gracious little nod.
“The detective in that photograph was asking hospital staff about an overdose,” Claire told the room. “He asked me where the elevators were. I showed him. You’ve now heard our entire conversation.”
Someone near the stage shifted in their chair.
“And I haven’t accepted money from Dominic Caruso. I still pay my rent and the lender who collects $1,125 from me every month. There are records of that, if anyone needs them.”
Lawrence reached for the microphone, but she wasn’t finished.
“Since we’re discussing honesty, I have a question for Mr. Fenwick. You said you accompanied Rafael Ortega in an ambulance and held his hand while we treated him. Rafael arrived in a private sedan at one twenty-six. Alone. Your name doesn’t appear on the hospital entry record until seven forty-three.”
The kindness vanished from Lawrence’s eyes, though the shape of his smile remained.
“You’re confused about a night that upset everyone.”
“Then explain the records,” Dominic said.
He had been standing near the ballroom entrance. Now he crossed the room, and the guests who habitually avoided his gaze watched every step.
He stopped beside Claire.
“Wade.”
The large screen behind the stage lit up. First came the hospital entry record. Then the registration of the sedan that had delivered Rafael.
Lawrence watched without moving.
A video replaced the documents. Rafael lay propped in his hospital bed, pale and plainly exhausted. Two days earlier, strong enough at last to give a full account, he had asked for Claire. Wade had heard what he wanted to tell her, and Rafael had agreed to have his statement recorded.
“The man driving for Lawrence shot me,” Rafael said on the screen. “Lawrence said he’d take care of everything after that.”
Nobody spoke when the video ended.
“Look at me, Dominic,” Lawrence said. “I was beside you for three decades. Has everything I did come to nothing because this woman walked in?”
“Giving an order never got me anywhere with Claire,” Dominic said. “She made me think instead. I should have started listening long before tonight.”
He faced the room.
“After my sister died, I thought having control would keep me safe. I made decisions for people and expected them to be grateful. I called it protection.”
Claire stood still beside him, her hands resting loosely at her sides.
“She refused that from the beginning,” he continued. “She also told me something I didn’t want to hear, knowing I could make her life difficult. And I let that happen.”
His eyes moved across the men whose approval had shaped his decisions for years.
“I’m standing with her. All of you can see it. If that means losing your support, you’re free to withdraw it.”
Then he turned to Claire.
“I won’t claim I can always recognize a lie. But I can listen when you tell me the truth. I intend to keep doing that, if you’ll have me.”
At the back of the ballroom, the doors opened. Men who had answered to Lawrence entered and paused. One stepped aside. Another followed him. None came to stand beside their employer.
Lawrence searched the room for a face that would offer him refuge. He found only people watching.
Later, Claire went out onto the hotel terrace with her coat over her shoulders. Below, traffic moved between the hills and the river. She rested her hands on the railing until she heard the door open behind her.
Dominic stopped several feet away.
“An apology doesn’t cover what I did.”
“No,” she said. “You expected faith from me and gave me suspicion when it mattered.”
He nodded.
She turned toward him. “I’m not going to become somebody you maintain. Or somebody who needs permission to leave. Whatever happens between us, I keep my own life.”
“You do.”
“That includes the parts you think you could improve.”
He took a step nearer, then stopped again.
“I’ll ask. You can refuse. I won’t make you pay for refusing.”
Claire studied his face. For once, he wasn’t managing the silence or trying to make the answer arrive sooner.
“That first night,” he said, “you looked straight at me. People don’t generally do that.”
“You looked ill.”
“You weren’t interested in the rest of it.”
“I was interested in whether you were going to pass out.”
He smiled a little, then held his hand out without closing the distance.
Claire had built so much of her life around staying beyond anybody’s claim. She had thought safety required never needing another person. Standing there, with a choice he was willing to leave entirely hers, she found she didn’t have to prepare an escape before reaching for him.
She took his hand.
There was no tremor in it.
The smell reached Claire as she opened her apartment door one Thursday in February. Garlic, well past saving. Four months had passed since the benefit.
“Before you say anything,” Dominic called from the kitchen, “I know.”
Wade had settled on the couch with tea and a book. Whatever had happened in the kitchen, he seemed determined to read through it.
A chirp from the smoke detector drew Claire’s eyes to the stove. Dominic had rolled up his sleeves and draped a dish towel over his shoulder. Burned garlic clung to the pan in front of him.
Claire set down her bag.
“Did the seasonings help?”
“Not much. But I got your approval before moving them.”
“That part of dinner went well, then.”
She crossed to the table, where cartons from a Chinese takeout place were arranged around two plates. Dominic had abandoned the pasta before it could do further damage.
Her hospital badge lay on the counter beside the mail. She had been reinstated. Sloane no longer worked at Riverview, and nobody on her unit needed to spend another moment discussing his sailboat. Lawrence was in custody, where elaborate bouquets could no longer assist his entrances.
Claire still paid her rent. The loan payment still came out of her account each month.
Through the front window she could see the black sedan at the curb. Her travel cup sat in its passenger-side holder. A paperback with a worn cover rested on the seat, and spare hair ties had accumulated in the little storage pocket beside it.
Claire pulled out a chair and rubbed her eyes. “Today may have set a record.”
“You said that last Thursday.”
“The hospital keeps finding ways to compete with itself.”
Dominic placed a carton within her reach, then sat across from her. He waited until she had taken a bite before asking the question.
“Would you like to go out after we eat? Or would you rather have a quiet evening here?”
She looked at the scorched pan, Wade’s carefully lowered eyes, and the man waiting for her answer across her own kitchen table.
“Here,” she said. “Have dinner with me. Don’t go anywhere.”