Part 7
Vivian reached for him before the door was fully open.
“Grant. Finally.”
He stayed where he was. Her hands stopped short of his arms.
She wore pearls and a fine pale sweater. Behind her, the entry table held fresh flowers beside a bowl nobody had ever put keys in. Grant could smell furniture polish.
Arthur appeared in the hallway, taking off his reading glasses.
“Come in, son.”
Grant crossed the threshold. Vivian glanced at his boots on the polished floor, then back at his face.
“I found Nora,” he said.
She drew in a breath. “Where?”
“Elwick. She was asking people for money. My son was with her.”
Arthur’s glasses lowered to his side.
Vivian put one hand at the base of her throat. “Grant, you need to be careful about what she—”
“He’s three. His name is Grant Thomas.” Grant opened the folder enough for her to see the laboratory report. “We’ve established paternity. There’s no uncertainty for you to work with.”
She didn’t reach for the paper.
“Nora was trying to buy Helen’s medicine,” he continued. “They were living in that house you found for them.”
“I gave them somewhere to go.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
Vivian’s voice lost its softness. “You’ve always let that girl make you feel responsible for her.”
Grant looked at his father. Arthur had sat on the narrow bench against the hall wall, his hands hanging between his knees.
“Did you know?” Grant asked him.
Arthur looked up slowly. “Not this.”
Vivian moved between them. “Everything I did was meant to protect your future.”
“You destroyed it.”
The words stopped her.
Grant took Nora’s letter from his jacket but kept it in his own hand.
“She was nineteen. Dean drugged her and arranged photographs while she was unconscious. You used them to make me believe she’d betrayed me. Then you sent her away with a baby she knew was mine.”
“I never told him to do anything like that.”
Arthur raised his head. “You knew about the pictures?”
Vivian looked toward him, furious for an instant at the interruption. Then her face crumpled.
“I wanted him to frighten her off. That’s all.”
Grant waited. She began explaining the things she couldn’t have known would happen: the electrical fire, Helen’s stroke, the money running out. She cried as she spoke, no longer bothering with the careful tissue she had used at the station.
Arthur turned toward Grant.
“I should have found out more. I let things go because it was easier.”
“You did.”
His father looked down at his glasses. Grant let the answer remain between them.
“Nora and I married two days ago,” he said. “Helen’s receiving care. We’re correcting G.T.’s records.”
Vivian lowered herself into a chair. “You married her without telling us?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“She’s still angry with me. I understand that. But if I could talk to her—”
“No.”
Grant put the letter back in his pocket.
“You don’t call her. You don’t visit my son. You don’t send something through a friend or use your office to make an arrangement for us. If Nora ever accepts help from you, it will be because she chose to, under terms she agrees to.”
Vivian’s hands twisted together.
“I’m your mother.”
“I know.”
He closed the folder.
She rose when he turned toward the door, but he opened it before she reached him.
“Grant, please. We can’t end like this.”
He looked at her one last time. “You don’t get to decide that today.”
Outside, he sat in the rented car until his hands were steady enough to drive. A delivery van stopped beside the building. A woman hurried past with a coat over her arm. He watched ordinary life continue through the windshield, then started the engine.
Dean was easier to find than Grant expected.
He was behind a bar near the river, smoking beside a dark sedan with two other men. One of them was telling a story. Dean laughed, saw Grant approaching, and stopped with the cigarette halfway to his mouth.
“Mercer. Hey.”
“Not like that,” Grant said.
The other men looked from one face to the other. They left without finishing the story.
Dean ground out the cigarette too carefully.
“I heard you were around.”
“Then you know I found her.”
Dean’s eyes went to the car.
Grant stopped several feet away. He could feel the impulse to close that distance. He kept his hands open at his sides.
“Nora told me about the tea. The photographs. What you threatened to do with them.”
Dean shook his head. “There’s more to it than she—”
“Tell me.”
For a few seconds, Dean seemed to search for the version that might save him.
“Your mother asked for help. She said Nora was taking advantage of you. She wanted you apart, and she said she’d help my uncle with a contract review if I could get it done.”
Grant’s jaw ached. “So you made her unconscious.”
“I didn’t assault her. I swear I didn’t. I just made it look…” Dean stopped.
“Finish.”
“Like we’d been together.”
Grant thought of G.T.’s hand closing around the dog tag. He looked past Dean toward the river, waited through one breath, then another.
“Where are the pictures?”
“Gone.”
Grant looked back at him.
“I deleted them.”
Neither man moved. From inside the bar came a burst of laughter and the sound of a chair scraping the floor.
Dean finally looked down.
“There’s an old phone,” he said.
He opened the passenger door of the sedan, reached into the glove compartment, and brought out a battered handset inside a stained envelope…
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