Chapter 7: The Thing Richard Was Protecting
Richard Hale picked up on the third ring.
"Matthew." His voice was easy, warm, the voice of a man with nothing to hide.
"I've been trying to reach you all day.
How are you?
Is everything —"
"Where are you right now?"
A pause.
Brief, but there.
"I'm at home.
Why?"
"I'm going to ask you something," Matthew said.
"And I need you to understand that I already know the answer.
I'm asking because I want to give you the chance to tell me yourself."
Silence.
"The car that h*t Anne Miller this morning," Matthew said.
"Thomas Greer's name is on the registration.
Thomas is your brother-in-law, Richard.
So I'm going to ask you one time: what did you do?"
The warmth left Richard's voice.
What replaced it was not anger.
It was something more careful than anger.
"You don't understand the full picture."
"Then explain it to me."
"It's complicated, Matthew.
There are things about Anne Miller that you never knew.
Things I've been managing for a long time to protect you and your family's interests —"
"She has a five-year-old daughter," Matthew said.
"She was crossing a street.
The car didn't slow down."
"I didn't tell anyone to —" Richard stopped.
Recalculated.
"I don't know what Thomas did.
I gave him information.
What he did with it was his own —"
"You gave him her address."
Silence.
"You gave him her schedule," Matthew said.
"You told him where she'd be this morning."
"Matthew, listen to me.
If you go down this road, if you start pulling on this thread, things will come out that will damage you.
Your family's name.
The Sullivan Foundation.
Your father's legacy.
Anne Miller is not worth —"
"Don't," Matthew said.
The single word landed like a door closing.
Richard shifted tactics.
"Think about what you're doing.
We've been friends for twenty years.
Twenty years, Matthew.
Are you really going to throw that away for a woman you dated for four months six years ago?
For a woman you walked away from?"
"You made me walk away from her."
"I told you the truth."
"You told me a lie."
The silence this time was different.
It had a texture to it — the texture of a man deciding how much to admit and how much to keep.
"I protected you," Richard said finally.
"That's what I did.
I protected you from a woman who would have cost you everything.
Your family's money, your father's approval, your position in the company.
She was nobody, Matthew.
She had nothing.
And you were going to throw your entire future away for —"
"She was everything," Matthew said.
"And you knew it.
That's why you were afraid of her."
A long pause.
"I want a lawyer present before I say anything else," Richard said.
"That," Matthew said, "is the first honest thing you've said to me in six years."
He ended the call.
He stood in the corridor for a moment, his phone in his hand, the fluorescent lights humming above him.
Then he walked back to where Sarah was sitting.
She had finished her colouring.
She was holding Luna in her lap and looking at the door to the recovery ward.
"Did you fix it?" she asked.
"Not yet.
But I'm going to."
"Promise?"
He sat down beside her.
"Promise," he said.
Sarah nodded once, satisfied, and leaned her head against his arm.
She was asleep within four minutes.
Matthew sat very still so she wouldn't wake.
James appeared at the end of the corridor.
He held up his phone — a document on the screen, several pages, the kind of document that took a skilled person working quickly to compile.
May you like
Matthew read it without waking Sarah.
By the time he finished, he had everything he needed.
