Chapter 5: Napa
Claire called four times between nine and eleven that night.
I let each one go to voicemail.
At eleven-fifteen, a text arrived: *Daniel.
I'm starting to worry.
Please just let me know you're safe.*
I read it twice.
Then I drove to Napa.
Not because I was ready.
Because the alternative — letting her wait indefinitely in a rented house with a weekend she had planned around a proposal she was expecting — felt like its own kind of dishonesty.
And I had already been surrounded by enough of that.
She opened the door before I reached it.
She had been watching for headlights.
Claire Beaumont was forty-one years old and had never looked anything other than composed.
Dark hair, pale skin, the kind of posture that came from a childhood of being watched and corrected.
She was wearing a cream-colored robe and holding a glass of wine she had clearly poured for something to do with her hands.
"You didn't call," she said.
"I know."
"I was worried."
"I know."
She stepped back to let me in.
The house was warm.
Candles on the dining table.
A fire in the sitting room.
Everything arranged for a particular kind of evening.
I stood in the entrance and didn't move further.
She read that.
Claire was very good at reading rooms.
"Something happened," she said.
"Yes."
"On the flight."
I looked at her.
Her expression didn't change.
But something behind her eyes did.
A small, almost imperceptible adjustment.
The kind a person makes when they realize a conversation they have been dreading has finally arrived.
"Emily Carter was on the flight," I said.
Claire took a sip of wine.
Set the glass down on the side table with great care.
"That must have been unexpected."
"She had a child with her.
A little girl.
Twenty-two months old."
Claire said nothing.
"Her name is Mia." I watched Claire's face.
"She has the Cole family eyes."
"Daniel—"
"My mother's bracelet was in a photograph taken at the Meridian gala.
You were wearing it.
I didn't give it to you." I kept my voice level.
"The estate manager's log shows you accessed the property twenty-eight months ago.
The bracelet was removed around that time."
Claire's chin lifted slightly.
"I think you should sit down."
"I don't want to sit down.
I want you to tell me about the phone call."
"What phone call?"
"The one Emily made to my office.
Three weeks after she left.
She left her name.
I never received the message." I took one step closer.
"Who answered that call, Claire?"
She was quiet for a long moment.
"You were in no condition—"
"Who answered it."
"You were barely sleeping.
You were losing weight.
The shareholders were circling and your father had just d*ed and you needed to be able to function." Her voice was measured.
Reasonable.
The voice of someone who had rehearsed this argument many times.
"A call from an ex-girlfriend who had walked out during the worst month of your life was not something you needed."
"That wasn't your decision to make."
"Someone had to make it."
"She was pregnant, Claire."
"I didn't know that."
"Did you know she had called?"
A pause.
"Yes."
The word landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
"And the letter," I said.
"The one you sent her.
Unsigned.
Telling her a child would complicate everything I was trying to build."
Claire picked up her wine glass again.
Her hand was steady.
That steadiness was the most disturbing thing in the room.
"I was protecting you."
"You were protecting your position."
"I was protecting the company.
Your father's company.
The thing he spent his entire life building." Her voice sharpened for the first time.
"Emily Carter was a pediatric therapist who worked twelve-hour shifts and cried when you came home late.
She was not equipped for the life you were going to have to live.
I was."
"So you decided.
For both of us."
"You weren't capable of deciding anything that month."
"And the bracelet?"
Her jaw tightened.
"Your mother's bracelet was sitting in a safe.
Your mother was g*ne.
You never looked at that safe." She set the glass down again.
"I wore it once.
To a public event.
I was trying to—" She stopped.
"To what?"
"To signal something.
To the people in that room who needed to understand that the Cole family was stable.
That there was a future." She looked at me directly.
"It worked.
Three board members who had been preparing to move against you stood down after that evening.
You still have your company, Daniel, in part because of what I did that night."
I stood very still.
Because the worst part was that I could not entirely dismiss it.
The board pressure had been real.
The threat had been real.
And I had no memory of that period clearly enough to know what had and hadn't held things together.
That was exactly what made it so dangerous.
"You made a decision about my child," I said.
"Without telling me.
And then you spent two years building a life with me on top of that decision."
Claire looked at me for a long moment.
"I made decisions that kept everything from falling apart."
"And now?"
She was quiet.
"And now," I said, "I need you to give me the bracelet back."
Her face changed then.
For the first time that evening, something cracked beneath the composure.
She crossed to the bedroom without a word.
She came back with the bracelet in her open palm.
I took it.
The sapphire clasp was exactly as I remembered it from my mother's wrist.
"I think you should go," Claire said.
"I think so too."
I walked to the door.
"Daniel." Her voice stopped me.
"Whatever you're planning — with Emily, with the child — it won't be simple.
It won't be clean.
You should know that before you begin."
I looked back at her.
"I already know that," I said.
"I've known it since Los Angeles."
I drove back toward the city with the bracelet in my jacket pocket where the ring box had been.
May you like
The ring box I had left on the table by the door.
I didn't go back for it.
