Chapter 3
"Take whatever belongs to you," Adrian said.
He stood in our bedroom with his shirtsleeves rolled back, as though I had returned from a business trip and interrupted him dressing. Beyond his shoulder, my shoes still lined the lower shelf. Eleven weeks dead, and he had not managed to make room for Lila's boots.
Tessa waited downstairs with a uniformed officer assigned to keep the retrieval peaceful. Adrian had objected to both of them. I had objected to being buried. We were learning to disappoint each other.
"My laptop."
"My father's drawings."
"The blue case in the wardrobe."
"You don't have to list them like exhibits."
"Then stop watching what I take."
He leaned against the bedpost. The room smelled of sandalwood and the expensive soap I used to buy him. On his side of the bed, one pillow lay folded in half, the way he slept when I worked late.
I hated noticing.
Adrian stepped closer as I reached for the case. His hand brushed my waist, familiar enough that my body recognized it before my judgment did. For a moment I remembered his mouth against my shoulder, his laugh muffled in the pillow, the unguarded version of him I had believed belonged only to me.
"Nora."
I turned. He was close enough to kiss, and he knew it.
"I grieved for you."
"You married quickly."
"The ceremony wasn't legally completed."
"That must be a comfort."
His expression changed. He lifted his hand toward my face, then waited, offering the old tenderness as though he had discovered consent only because witnesses were downstairs.
I stepped around him.
In the wardrobe, my drafting case was empty.
"Where are the Halcyon drawings?"
"In storage."
"Everything from the renovation was collected for the insurers."
"My personal copies weren't theirs."
"I'll have them found."
I took my laptop instead. Tessa had brought proof of ownership and a list of what I needed. I had no intention of arguing until Adrian discovered which missing thing mattered most.
On the dressing table stood the small ceramic bowl where I emptied my pockets. Inside it lay a receipt, two hairpins, and the indentation left by my rings in the velvet travel pouch. Lila had been the last person in this room before the owners' dinner. She had offered to collect my bag while I went downstairs to speak with Miriam.
I photographed the pouch.
Adrian watched me do it.
"What did Lila tell you?"
"What did you tell her?"
He smoothed his cuff although it was still rolled up. That tiny useless movement frightened me more than anger would have.
Downstairs, Tessa had opened an envelope delivered while we were upstairs. A lender had responded to her notice. Attached was a copy of a guarantee supposedly signed by me six months earlier, securing a loan against my interest in the hotel.
I had never seen it.
The signature resembled mine until the final stroke. My old wrist injury made me lift the pen before crossing the last letter. Whoever signed this had copied the shape without the interruption.
"I didn't sign that," I said.
Adrian closed the bedroom door behind us, although everyone was already downstairs.
"We can discuss the finances when you've recovered."
Tessa put the document in her folder.
"She has answered the question."
For a second, I saw a man I did not know. His face emptied, leaving calculation where concern had been. Then he looked toward the officer and became my worried husband again.
"She almost died," he said.
"You should all remember that."
I remembered the envelope Miriam had pressed into my hand. I remembered the owners' dinner being brought forward, Adrian asking me to sign a short confirmation before dessert. I had refused to sign anything without reading the underlying agreement.
Rusk had come to fetch me ten minutes later.
Tessa carried my laptop to the car. I followed, holding the empty drawing case. Adrian came out onto the steps barefoot, an intimate detail deployed too late.
"I thought you couldn't get out," he said.
I stopped.
"Out of where?"
"The hotel."
"You told the newspapers I was in the east ballroom."
His gaze dropped to the case.
"Everything was confused that night."
"I was in the west archive."
"I know that now."
I had not told him. The accounts released to the public had placed me upstairs, and at the wedding I had said only that a door was locked. Chen had kept my precise account within the investigation.
The officer watched us from beside the car. Adrian noticed him again and retreated into the house.
I sat down carefully, my ankle throbbing. Tessa asked if I needed a moment. I told her what Adrian had said, then called Chen before we left the drive.
That evening, Lila sent an address. A treatment room at the club where we had once spent afternoons pretending our lives were exhausting because we needed massages.
Chen arranged for us to use the adjoining lounge instead, with people nearby and an officer outside. Lila accepted without argument.
Her final message arrived as I put my wedding photographs into a box.
Don't let him tell you the fire took his choice away.