Chapter 4 - WHAT DAVID STOLE
“I’m not asking you to fight him.”
Luca said it before Blaire could speak.
They were still standing in the kitchen.
The gala program lay between them.
Blaire’s father’s watch rested beside it.
“I need you to understand that,” he continued.
Blaire looked at him.
“You were about to give him an award.”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
“Now I know the story we were told may not be his.”
“Might not?”
Luca accepted the correction.
“Isn’t.”
Blaire crossed her arms.
“What happens?”
“That depends partly on what you want.”
The answer surprised her.
David never asked what she wanted unless the acceptable answer had already been chosen.
“I don’t want a stage.”
“Then you won’t have one.”
“I don’t want strangers photographing Fiona.”
“They won’t.”
“I don’t want you using what happened to me to make yourself look noble.”
Luca held her gaze.
“I won’t.”
She waited.
No defense.
No offended expression.
No speech about gratitude.
Just the answer.
Fiona and Theo had moved into the living room, where Theo was showing her a box of wooden animals.
Their laughter carried through the doorway.
Blaire’s shoulders lowered slightly.
“I just want my life back.”
Luca looked at the watch.
“Then perhaps we start there.”
Mara arranged a car for Queens.
Before Blaire left, Luca handed her a plain card.
No gold lettering.
No assistant’s number.
Just Luca Sterling and a direct line.
“You don’t owe me a call.”
Blaire put it into her coat.
“Thank you.”
“Blaire.”
She looked back.
“If David comes near you tonight, do not convince yourself you’re being dramatic.”
The words landed harder than he knew.
She nodded.
Her cousin, Nora, lived in a narrow brick building in Astoria.
The apartment was tiny.
Two bedrooms.
One bathroom.
Radiator clanking every fifteen minutes.
It felt like freedom.
Nora hugged Blaire for so long Fiona got bored and squeezed between them.
That night, Blaire slept on a pullout couch.
Or tried to.
At 2:17 a.m., she heard Fiona whisper from the mattress beside her.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Are we staying?”
“For a little while.”
“Daddy coming?”
Blaire stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t know.”
Fiona was quiet.
Then:
“I like Theo’s toast.”
Blaire almost laughed.
“Go to sleep.”
The next afternoon, Blaire agreed to meet Luca at the gala venue.
Not for the gala.
For information.
A ballroom on Park Avenue was being transformed beneath chandeliers and ladders.
Workers tested screens.
Florists arranged white roses.
A giant wall displayed photographs from community programs funded by the Sterling Foundation.
Blaire entered through a side corridor with Fiona holding her hand.
Luca was already there.
So was David.
Blaire stopped.
David turned.
For three full seconds, neither moved.
He looked exactly as he had eleven days earlier.
Expensive coat.
Perfect hair.
Calm face.
The face that had convinced neighbors Blaire was the unreasonable one.
His gaze dropped to Fiona.
Then to Blaire’s coat pocket.
He knew.
“The watch.”
Not hello.
Not where have you been.
Not is Fiona okay.
The watch.
Blaire felt something settle inside her.
“Good to see you too, David.”
His eyes hardened.
“You took it.”
Fiona moved closer to Blaire.
Blaire squeezed her hand.
“No.”
David gave a short laugh.
“Then how did it leave my desk?”
Fiona spoke before Blaire could stop her.
“I took it.”
David’s face changed.
Fiona lowered her eyes.
“It’s Mommy’s.”
Blaire stepped slightly in front of her.
“Do not make her feel guilty.”
“I’m not.”
“You already are.”
David looked toward Luca.
“Mr. Sterling, I’m sorry you’ve been pulled into a personal dispute.”
Luca’s voice stayed even.
“You told me that watch belonged to your father.”
David went still.
Only for a second.
Then he recovered.
“I said it represented my father.”
“No.”
Luca’s eyes did not move.
“You told me he gave it to you.”
David looked at Blaire.
There it was.
The familiar shift.
Not shame.
Calculation.
“Blaire knows I spoke symbolically sometimes.”
She almost admired it.
Five years of marriage, and he could still surprise her.
“You engraved my name on your symbolism?”
David’s mouth tightened.
He stepped closer.
Mara moved once.
That was enough.
David stopped.
“This is getting ridiculous.”
Blaire pulled out the watch.
She turned it over.
Luca did not need to read the engraving again.
David did.
For the first time, his composure cracked.
“You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“That everything I did was keeping things alive.”
“What things?”
“The organization.”
“Our marriage?”
His eyes flickered.
“The organization.”
At least that answer was honest.
“You were good with people,” he said. “I was good with money. Donors needed a story they could understand.”
“So you gave them mine.”
“I gave them a version that worked.”
Fiona looked confused.
Blaire hated him for letting her hear this.
“Take Fiona with Mara.”
Luca spoke quietly.
Blaire glanced at him.
“I’ll be right here,” she told Fiona.
Fiona nodded.
Mara led her toward a nearby room where Theo and Luca’s housekeeper were waiting.
David watched her go.
“I’m still her father.”
“No one said otherwise,” Luca replied.
David laughed bitterly.
“You think you know what this is because she cried on an airplane?”
Blaire stiffened.
Luca did not.
“I know what you told my board about the watch.”
David looked at Blaire.
Then he did something she had not expected.
He lowered his voice.
“Tell him about Lake Geneva.”
Her stomach dropped.
Luca noticed.
David continued.
“Tell him why I changed the locks.”
Blaire felt the old shame rise immediately.
The wet wooden dock.
Fiona screaming.
The red life jacket.
A wineglass breaking against a fireplace.
David holding up his phone while she begged him to stop recording.
Luca turned toward her.
“What happened at Lake Geneva?”
David answered first.
“She lost control.”
Blaire looked at him.
“That’s what you called it.”
“You terrified our daughter.”
Blaire’s face went white.
David pressed harder.
“She screamed. She broke a glass. She accused people of things that weren’t happening.”
Something twisted inside her.
Because parts of it were true.
She had screamed.
She had broken the glass.
She had been nearly hysterical.
David could tell the story without technically lying.
That was always his talent.
Luca looked at Blaire.
Not suspicious.
Waiting.
She swallowed.
“Fiona disappeared for twenty-three minutes.”
David’s jaw tightened.
“She wandered.”
“You were supposed to be watching her.”
“I thought she was with my mother.”
“You were texting Vanessa.”
David’s silence answered.
Blaire looked at Luca.
“When I found Fiona, she was beside the water wearing one rain boot and carrying a red life jacket twice her size.”
Her voice trembled.
“I broke a glass because David told me I was embarrassing him.”
David shook his head.
“You were unstable.”
“You recorded me instead of helping me.”
“I recorded what happened.”
“No.”
Blaire’s eyes filled.
“You recorded what happened after.”
The room became quiet.
Then a woman’s voice came from behind them.
“That is true.”
Blaire turned.
Eleanor Vance stood at the end of the corridor.
David’s mother looked older than Blaire remembered.
She carried herself with the same stiff elegance.
But her face was pale.
David stared at her.
“Mom.”
Eleanor looked at Blaire.
“I should have said that two years ago.”
May you like
Then she looked at her son.
“You never showed anyone the first twenty-three minutes.”
